Written by: Robertson Stephens
Today, a well-developed marketing plan is one of the most effective ways to convey your value proposition to potential investors and give you an edge over your competitors. As a financial advisor, you need a comprehensive strategy catered to a specific target market, with content curated around your business objectives and unique skill set.
Here are a few ways you can generate an effective marketing plan that will help your business stand out and bring you your ideal client.
Design Your Marketing Plan Around Your Long-Term Goals And ROI
The way you strategize your marketing is going to directly affect your client base, their expectations, and consequently, your long-term goals with your business. When considering the long game, keep in mind things like how you want to position your business, and how you want to shape its perception. Your clientele will help establish the value of your business, and in the long run, will refer potential clients to you as well.
On the other hand, you must also decide the more objective ROI you want to achieve from your plan. Whether a long-term or immediate goal, finalizing the ROI is a crucial foundation step. Once you know what you want from your marketing efforts, you have a clearer direction to take in terms of what channels and strategies to focus on. Make sure that you take into consideration all these nuances and curate your marketing plan accordingly.
Identify Your Target Market
You may have an image of your ideal client in your mind, but you need to define them very clearly based on their attributes, preferences, and financial goals. Having too loose a definition of your target audience will just lead to you creating broad-brush content that caters to no one in particular. Identifying your target market will give you clarity on the kind of client you want to work with, and the marketing efforts required to reach out to them.
The best way for you to identify your ideal target audience is to create an ideal client persona (link to the other article). Narrow down on various aspects of this persona like their key demographics, where they stand in their financial journeys, and what they wish to accomplish. This knowledge will allow you to tailor your brand position and marketing communications, making you much more effective in reaching your clients and acquiring them.
Have A Clear Differentiator
This is one of the most critical parts of any marketing plan: you need to take a clear look at what separates you from the crowd of financial advisors and advisories in order to stand out. People will be interested in opting for your services if you can provide something that no one else can.
Ensure you perform a competitor analysis to understand the environment you’re in. Alternatively, you can also utilize your unique value proposition and use it as your marketing’s focal point. Ensure this is something that not many other financial advisors offer, and that it can reach your clients on a distinct level.
Choose The Best Marketing Channels
Deciding on marketing channels involves keeping in mind three things - your ROI, budget, and client persona. Combined, these will tell you the ideal marketing channels you need to target, and if you should target just traditional marketing, digital marketing (link to other article), or both.
Digital marketing is much more cost-effective as compared to traditional marketing, but going digital makes no sense if your ideal persona isn’t tech-savvy. The better bet would be to host an in-person event. If your target audience is one that’s constantly on the move, social media may be the ideal way to grab their attention. In this manner, you need to channelize your efforts to create a marketing plan that’s as effective as it can be.
Track The Efforts And Course-Correct
Keeping your ROI in mind throughout the duration of your marketing plan and measuring your efforts against it is how you can track what works and what doesn’t. For example, you might want increased reach to grow your brand awareness, which would mean measuring engagement across platforms. If your strategy is growth-oriented, then you’d want an increase in sales i.e., measuring your sales funnel and charting lead-generation.
This will allow you to fine-tune your marketing strategies to your liking. Moreover, if and when the analytics of your campaign change with its performance, you can relocate your efforts and resources to serve you best.
Generating an effective marketing plan is just the first cog in the wheel, but done right, it can elevate your reach and improve the positioning of your brand. Consistent effort and data-based course-correction is sure to yield results.
For more information on how Robertson Stephens works with their Wealth Advisors for their marketing needs, please fill out our ‘Contact Us’ form on the page.
Related: Blending Principles With a Unique Approach to Wealth Planning with Raj Bhattacharyya