Trending
Marketing is a continual process, and without representing your brand, your company can become irrelevant fast. Financial clients are aware of your competitors because they are continuously exposed to digital posts and ads, even when checking their email-thanks to targeting. Technology has figured out how to target investors when they go to their online account access. Just typing in a web address creates a path for potential marketing entries when a prospective or current client is searching ‘financial.’
In this high tech marketing arena, how are you going to be found? Digital marketing is the number one way clients engage with you and prospects find you-but only if you’re participating and developing a yearly budget for MarTech. The adage of 8% of the total operating budget devoted to marketing may or may not be a reasonable estimate, and you may need to spend 11-12% of your overall budget to stand out from the crowd.
Why? If you’re a new advisor with your DBA or breaking away to independence, you need to rebrand yourself and announce it digitally. Remember those ‘rules’ about transferring clients away from ‘them’ and over to you? You can do it quietly, intentionally, and aside from direct client contact if you use digital technology. Think about social media and your website for starters. If you’re a small office you will likely need to hire outside talent to accomplish goals because you can’t effectively digitally yourself or manage the MarTech software- you’re an advisor .
Expenditures to consider in Your MarTech Budget:
Original Content Creation: blogs, video, podcasts, market summaries, etc. Expect to pay $250+ for one page or up to $125+ per hour for other content creations through outside sources. Tip: Hire agency writers who specialize in the financial industry or have worked in it!
Custom Website Design: $3500 upwards to $60,000+ (the $60K had issues, sometimes expense doesn’t equate to quality). Hosting may be an additional on-going expense and make sure you own the rights to your website (unless through a vendor).
MarTech Management: Expect to pay $4000+ per month retainer aside from overhead expenses including all deployment, analytics reporting, and management of other vendors you may utilize. Social Media account management should be a part of this- LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Apple News, and other public media platforms.
Automated Content Solutions: Digital Newsletters or social content posts that keep you in front of clients such as freshFinance or if you work for a corporation freshMerge software to create in-house for your entire team.
Related: How to Be Heard In a Room Full of (Marketing) Noise
Secondly, If you’re a corporation that’s experienced negative press, you need to increase your spend. The only way to propel forward quickly is by spending more on MarTech solutions (software, website) and platforms (Facebook, LI, Twitter Ads, Google AdWords and others) to offset the noise from mistakes and misfortunes created internally. You may have a team of marketers that specialize in specific areas or digital software platforms (such as digital creation and lead generation).
Regardless of office size, digital marketing is estimated to take 41% of marketing budgets in 2018 ( 2018 CMO Marketing survey ) with Social Media utilizing 25% of spend in digital (content is part of this cost). The good news is that digital marketing and MarTech solutions cost less than traditional marketing (local TV, radio, or print) and can level the playing field between a small and large company. Besides, who watches traditional TV, reads the newspaper or listens to local radio anymore? It’s likely your clients and potential clients are using the internet and mostly personal devices for their news and entertainment. Let them find you while they’re doing their ‘surfing.’
https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveolenski/2018/01/24/5-ways-tech-will-change-marketing-in-2018/#61c69a4d3db5