Marketing: The Essential Piece of Every Advisor’s Practice

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Recorded at the T3 Advisor Conference 2022.  Presented by:

Advisorpedia interviewed Susan Theder, the Chief Marketing & Experience Officer at FMG, at the T3 Advisor Conference in May, 2022.

Resources: FMG

Related: The Biggest Challenges Advisors Face Building Their Tech Stack

Transcript:

Shannon Rosic  00:06

For a long time advisors have considered marketing a nice to have. But now it is an essential piece of their practice. I caught up with Susan Theder of FMG to hear how they're helping advisors solve for this challenge.

Susan Theder 00:19

W had a huge announcement today, we have rebranded and we've launched a new product that I think is really exciting called do it, for me marketing. . .

Because let's face it, what advice was really like, it's not to learn how to market but to have somebody do it for them. So what we're gonna do is Samantha Russell, our chief evangelist, and I, every month, we're going to develop an ideal marketing calendar, including social posts and emails. And we're going to write all of those social posts and emails.

And we're also going to come up with authentic ideas that the advisor can do on their own, we're going to share it with the advisor, they approve it, they make changes, and we will execute it on their behalf. And I think they're going to be really excited about that. So I'm thrilled to be offering that and I'm excited to see it come to the market.

Now, I think the biggest challenges advisors face and it's nothing new is just finding both the time, having the expertise and the resources to market effectively. I mean, it's, they've got a huge pile of things on their desk that they need to do every day. And marketing just feels like another burden — that potentially is a nice to have sort of nags them in the back of their head, like I need to be doing this. But it's just hard, it's hard to do. And it's not why they got into this business in the first place.

Now, I think advisors have gone from feeling like it's a nice to have to need to have and what FMG and my passion is all about making it as easy as possible for them to market effectively. And I emphasize that word, because it's not just check the box. It's not just about putting content on your website, or putting a social post up or sending a newsletter out — that doesn't do anything. The biggest reason to do marketing is to show your authentic self, to build your personal brand and to build connections with your clients. Because those are the ones that are referring you.

We think of advisor marketing as an ascendant journey. There's, there's what you need to do to get started, and that may be good enough for you. And then there's what you do once you've mastered that, and so on and so forth. And I think I think right now the most important thing that advisor needs to do is to have a good powerful website, that is modern and clean and follows best practices and passes the five second tests like — if you go visit your website, to ask a stranger, you know, ask a friend to look at your website and say, "Do you know who I serve, why I serve them and how to reach me" in five seconds? And if not, it's time to probably take another look what used to be your reception area. And that reading experience now is your website and it's the most critical thing to think about