Financial Advisor Marketing Plan: The 7 Essential Elements

Your brand strategy is made up of three parts:

1. Positioning

This is your slice of the pie; the corner of the market that you want to own. This is your building on the street, so you need to figure out what that “storefront” looks like on your Main Street.  In what sliver of the market do you compete?

2. Personality

How will you show up as a person in the world? How do you talk? What is your vibe? What are you all about?  Consider your brand as a human.  How would you describe yourself?  What makes you likeable?  What attributes draw people to you?

3. People

Who are the people that you want to attract into your business? Who is your high-value hyper targeted audience? This means you identify the best people and your favorite people, and you go after them with your marketing. These are the people with whom you want to fill your business.

When you know these three parts, you have clarity on your brand strategy. You can begin to implement initiatives that enhance the value of your brand.

Can a prospective client who comes to your website understand what you offer? Are you tapping into their fears, their aspirations, and answering their questions?  The way you present your service offering is essential, and it is  often overlooked.

Your service offering should answer three questions that your audience asks:

1. What am I buying?

In other words, “What do I, as a client, get for the money I pay you?”  What is the value you offer?

2. How does it work?

You have to outline the process. Show a step-by-step method that they can get behind and understand.  When you explain the way your work, they should walk away knowing what is going to happen next.

3. What does it cost?

Be very clear on your pricing. Are you charging on percentage of assets? Do you charge a flat fee? Are you somewhere in between? Make sure you’re demonstrating value with your pricing.

When you answer these three questions, you give clarity to your offering which will help attract the right kind of client.

How are the right people going to find out about your firm? How are you going to build awareness and generate that interest?

What you need to do is break your efforts down into multiple funnels. Alot of times advisors think of everything they do going into one funnel and that’s how it (marketing ) works. What you actually have is one funnel of people coming in that are from your personal networks. What are you doing to be out in the community to be engaged to do one-to-one human efforts? Those types of things have a limited amount of reach, but they can be really powerful.

Lead capture and nurture

Another essential part of a client attraction system is to have a lead capture and nurture system (that goes into a different funnel). How are you getting out and sharing content in the world, letting people know what you’re about and educating them, so you can attract them in to start to build that trust with them.

From there, you add on complexities to your attraction system (each with their own funnel) depending on your goal. Whether it’s focusing on the media, or centers of influence, or something else. When you define your client attraction system, you know exactly where to direct and prioritize your marketing resources.

Want to learn how to use video as a way to market your firm?  Take the first step by watching this video.

This element is the most overlooked, yet the most valuable in your plan: What are you doing to create your marketing list?

Most people who hear about you or who arrive at your website are not yet ready to take action. Maybe they’ve stopped on a lunch break where they’ve taken 15 minutes and done a search. They found you. They need to have a way to be able to introduce themselves without having to commit to consultation right off the bat.

How is that you are keeping track of all of those leads, prospects, and even clients so that you can communicate, nurture, and build trust with them? To be able to do that, you need to focus your marketing on a list building strategy. Most advisors focus on the small percent of people who are ready to take action right now. In fact, most of the people who come to your website or learn about you, aren’t ready yet to take action.

Grow your marketing list with a lead magnet

You need to ask, “How is it that I am going to let people introduce themselves to me so that they can begin to get to know me?” This is done through something called a lead magnet. What kinds of valuable information are you providing in exchange for a name and email address, so someone can raise their hand and say, “Yes, it’s okay if you talk to me. I want to get to know you better.”

This way, when a trigger event occurs in their life, you’ll be top of mind, and they’ll reach out to you. If you don’t yet have a clear way that someone can sign up for your marketing list in exchange for something valuable, then now is the time to add that to your experience.

This element is actually a complete system. It starts with the point of someone raising their hand and introducing themself, and goes all the way through to them being a loyal client in your firm. I call this your “relationship marketing system.”

Build the relationship

The first half of your relationship marketing system is your lead-to-client conversion process. This is all about structured follow-up. What are the communications you’re going to send this person? What is the experience they will have from the time they introduce themselves and as they continue through the journey of becoming a client? You need to define each and every one of those steps along the way.

Deepen the relationship

The second half of your relationship marketing system is all about the client system. How do you structure that first year experience so that they immediately see the value and begin to build a loyalty to you. What is the experience they have and what are the communications they receive? All of this needs to be defined.

Your goal is to deepen the loyalty of your clients so they become ambassadors of your brand. All of this can be spelled out in your relationship marketing system.

How do you know if you’re winning along the way? We need to set metrics that tell us whether or not we’re on track for our growth goal or the initial goal that we set at the beginning of the marketing plan.

It’s very important not to overwhelm yourself with data. You need to decide what the key indicators are that you’re going to track so you know that you’re on pace to hit your growth goal.

Make sure you know who is responsible for tracking each of the metrics, how they’ll be reported, and how often. When you look at them regularly along the way, you can make course adjustments that will help you get to or exceed your goal.

Pro marketing tip

If you do not know how to use google analytics to get the data you want, hire a freelancer who specializes in this skill on a platform such as upwork. You’ll save yourself hours and hours of work and have a dashboard to keep you on track.