Written by: Courtney Browning
Marketing is often one of the largest investments for an independent financial advisor. Just like the investments in your clients’ portfolios, marketing efforts need to be considered an investment (not an expense.) This means measuring, evaluating and adapting over time to fit the changing environment.
In my most recent blog, I shared tips on
creating a successful marketing plan for a financial advisor. Once these efforts are in place, there are 5 R’s to remember to evaluate your marketing.
REVIEW. REVISE. RETEST. REALLOCATE. REPEAT.
Review: Each of your marketing initiatives should include mechanisms for tracking each stage of your sales cycle. For example, if you do a direct mail piece for a seminar, you may have a spreadsheet that includes the number of:
- invitations sent
- event RSVPs
- event attendance
- appointments booked, (1st, 2ndand 3rdappointment)
- new clients acquired and total assets gathered.
This will help you clearly identify the acquisition costs for leads and clients to quantify your marketing initiative.
Revise: If your marketing efforts was “not a success,” don’t stop there. Evaluate where the disconnect occurred. If your mailer got a positive response and your event was well attended, but you failed to capture appointments or business, it’s time to revise the sales presentation and conversion process. However, if there were no initial calls out of the gate for your event, then the invitation, timing, venue or event type itself may need to be reconsidered. Zero in on potential roadblocks and move on to the next step—retesting.
Retest: If your gut tells you that you are on to something that just needs to be tweaked, edit a limited number of elements, and try again. Consider A/B testing with only one element changed, such as different headlines, lists or outlets to advance your understanding of your unique audience and market.
Reallocate: Marketing is an investment, and there comes a time to recognize when to double down and when to cut your losses and reallocate. The key is to maintain diversification with multiple sources of revenue and prospects to achieve consistency in your marketing returns.
Repeat: As all successful advisors know, consistency of effort is essential for consistency of results. If something works—don’t stop doing it!
Related:
3 Things That Are Destroying Your Brand
