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Financial advisors have to face plenty of challenges in their pursuit of success. Being a financial advisor is a tough gig despite both triumphs and failures. What separates good financial advisors from great ones is their ability to build and enact marketing plans. A marketing plan is the advertising strategy a business takes to sell its product or service. Whereas one advisor might bring in ten clients, an advisor with a solid marketing plan could bring in twenty within the same timeframe.
Marketing plans are what you make them, we’re here to help you build one that works for you. We want you to be the advisor who brings in twenty new clients. That’s why we’re providing you with steps to create a financial advisor marketing plan that will help you succeed. Read on to see our 4 Steps for Building a Financial Advisor Marketing Plan.
1. Set Goals for Yourself
One of the biggest issues companies face is not being sure of what they want. Of course, every business wants to make money and continue to grow and expand, but at what rate? An even better question would be at what criteria would you consider yourself successful? It’s important for financial advisors to know at what point they consider what they’re doing to be succeeding.
That’s why Step 1 of building a financial advisor marketing plan is to set goals for both your business and your employees. Everyone needs to start somewhere and knowing what you want to achieve should be your starting line. Not having goals would be like going on a road trip without a GPS or map. You can drive as much as you want, but you’ll most likely get lost. Think of the goals as your directional tools to get you to your destination.
When setting goals, be realistic. If you pump your goals up too high, you’ll be adding unnecessary stress and ruining the whole point of creating a marketing plan. When finding your goals, ask yourself some of these questions:
- I have X clients right now, what number do I want to reach by the end of the year?
- We communicate X amount of times with clients a week, what do we want to raise it to?
- How can we make client communication better?
- How do we make our service better for our clients?
Pro Tip: Not every goal has to be quantitative, setting goals is meant to push you to do and be better. If you think your communication with clients could be better, add that to your goals list.
2. Identify Your Audience
Step 2 is all about finding out who you’re looking to target for clients. Some companies might focus on a niche, while others try to reach a broader audience. This is where research comes into play, by finding out what audience you attract, you’ll be able to create a more efficient marketing plan. For example, if your service is in financial investment, your audience isn’t going to be kids or teenagers. It’s going to be older people wanting to grow their money for a longer-term payoff.
Finding out who your audience will affect what platforms you use to advertise and the tone of voice/attitude you’ll use. It can also help you decide how you want to approach marketing in terms of digital or physical media. Knowing all this is crucial to ensuring you don’t waste money or time when the time to start marketing begins.
Here are a few good questions to help you get started on finding your audience:
- How do they like to communicate?
- What is your demographic?
- Are they more professional or personal?
Pro Tip: Identifying your target is important for personalizing marketing/services. Research has shown that 80 percent of consumers are more likely to do business with a brand that offers personalized interactions.
3. Build the Plan
Now that you’ve set goals for yourself along with finding your target audience it’s time to start building the actual marketing plan. This is done by taking your previous research and figuring out the best plan of action. For instance, if you found that middle-aged people looking to invest their money were your target audience/niche, you might want to focus on using Facebook as an advertising platform. Maybe increase your social media presence and expand the content you put out on those platforms.
It’s important that when spending money on marketing, you make sure of what platform(s) you’re using for advertising. Each one has its own cost and multiple options that could seem a little overwhelming. Before you pick any, be sure to check these thoughts in mind:
- Know which platforms your target audience is active on
- Consider what service/product you are providing
- Research competitors and the platforms they’re on
- Be aligned with your original goals
- Keep your resources in mind, you don’t want to overspend
Pro Tip: If you plan to use multiple platforms, try to post different content on each one. Don't just rehash the same message across all your channels.
4. Put the Plan Into Action
Your setup is all complete, now it’s time to put your plan into action. Don’t be worried, you’ve put in the work to ensure that the content you put out will resonate with your target audience. It might take a few days or weeks, but your marketing plan will show how useful it can be.
Remember, just because the plan has been created, doesn’t mean it can’t be adjusted. Marketing isn’t static, and things are always changing in the advertising landscape, so if things start to become less effective don’t be scared to make adjustments.
Pro Tip: Be as consistent as possible. Having a set schedule for content release will make your marketing more efficient. But again, don't be afraid to make adjustments.
Best Practices Checklist
To further ensure that you’re successful in your marketing. Here’s a checklist of things that you should be focusing on when advertising as a financial advisor. Along with some of the best practices that we feel will put you above your competitors.
Websites
Make sure that your website is up to date and looking nice. There are many aspects to keep in mind when checking to see if your site is making use of all the best practices. Be sure to check that your site includes:
- Call to Actions (CTAs)
- Navigation that’s easy to use
- A working contact page
- Stylish design that separates you from others in your field
If you need some inspiration, here’s a list of our 10 Top Advisor Sites that stand out among their peers.
Blogs
Not all advisor sites have a blog but those can potentially see 97% more links to their site. Along with an increase of visitors found through search. Blogs are an easy way to increase your site’s SEO ranking, but be sure that when creating a blog you’re putting in the necessary effort. Don’t just write a couple of paragraphs filled with high-ranking SEO words. If you’re going to have a blog do it right and you’ll be very happy with the results you see.
Email is one of the best ways to stay connected with current clients. And though there is such thing as “too much” communication, communicating not enough is far worse. How often you decide to communicate will be up to your business, but we do recommend reaching out to not only update your clients, but to also surprise and delight them. If you’re looking to learn how you can effectively market using email, then this blog post will help.
And if you’re looking for additional assistance, we offer both timely email content – designed to show off your expertise – and birthday, holiday and special event messaging. Click here to learn more.
Social Media
Today’s most popular way of communicating, social media is a pillar of marketing. Hosting over 4.6 billion users worldwide across all platforms it’s easy to see why so many companies put so much focus into their marketing on these sites. When posting, be sure to stay consistent with your brand voice and engage with your audience. Ask them questions and create posts that get them talking. The more activity you can get going on your page the better.
Related: 6 Social Media Posts Financial Advisors Can Use To Showcase Their Brand