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Posts Tagged ‘Desperate Marketer’

“We need to revamp our marketing for our financial advisory practice and start doing something, anything consistently to generate consistent results,” Desperate Marketer wrote in an email.

He continued, “Seminars aren’t generating results for financial advisors in our area. As a matter of fact, we stopped them completely in July, 2007. I need to be building something that will help us stand out and build our client base to support the continuation of our business.”

If Not Seminars, What?

“Seminars aren’t working,” is a familiar complaint. What can work?

A dicey way to build a practice is to grasp at one marketing tool after another in the hopes that the next one will work. The safer, strategic way is to prepare a good road map. That’s where a marketing plan comes in.

The plan starts with your prospects, but not just any prospects. You’re looking for your Ideal Prospects. They are the people you really want to attract, and you don’t care about others who are not like them. A clear portrait of your Ideal Prospects focuses your marketing plan superbly.

A vital question for financial advisors is, “How can I as a financial advisor make my prospects’ lives easier?” This example came from a client, an independent advisor. Recently, she competed with top advisors from Merrill Lynch, Wells Fargo, and Smith Barney to advise a non-profit foundation in her area.

She won out because she pinpointed the foundation’s needs and answered every one of their questions. The others only guessed. Her service on numerous non-profit boards and her 20 years of experience as an investment management consultant to non-profits routed her competition.

How Are You Different?

Differentiation is the second key element in a marketing plan.

“Desperate Marketer” noted that “As far as we know, we’re the only Registered Investment Advisor firm in the area. The big issue is that we are lumped in the same category as our competitors.” Could being an RIA become his differentiation? Perhaps. But it would be only a part of his “Category of One” positioning. And he would need to spell out exactly what being an RIA means for his clients.

What else can he add to reach a category of his own? Possibly, he works with a group — such as owners of family farms, franchise owners, or individuals 55 and older looking to retire — where he has special expertise. The advisor with 20 years of non-profit and foundation experience is The Expert on non-profits in her region.

Connecting To Your Audience

Once you have the foundation of your marketing plan in place, you are ready to select the tools and tactics that will lead to results.