Updated August 10th, 2023.
Successful financial advisors have a marketing plan, and they know the exact type of client they want to attract. Their marketing efforts focus on connecting with their target audience, acquiring more affluent clients, and bottom-line business growth.
As you create your overall plan to grow your business, focus on these steps:
- Identify your ideal client.
- Research the niche market and dig deep to discover your ideal audience.
- Make sure your products align with their interests and solve their problem.
- Conduct research with prospective clients, find out what they want, and offer valuable solutions that help them.
- Convert these prospects into clients.
- Monitor your numbers, establish KPIs to measure success, and bottom-line your results.
1. Identify Your Ideal Client
Successful advisors and coaches are crystal clear on their target market and the type of client they want to attract. As a result, they know that the financial products and services they offer provide real value and solve the challenges of their ideal and prospective clients.
For example, if your ideal prospect is a business owner, identify their three most significant challenges and confirm that your solutions solve them. For instance:
- A business owner shares that she pays too much in taxes. You provide company-sponsored retirement plans.
- An entrepreneur is worried about liquidity if his partner dies. You offer liquidity solutions in the event of an unexpected death.
- Your divorced client shares that she is a spendthrift and does not have a spending plan. You provide her coaching to elevate her worth barometer and confidence, along with a budgeting guide to assist her in managing her money.
2. Research Your Target Niche
Take time to find out everything about your existing book of business.
Conduct research with interviewees (prospects who may never become your client), clients, including current and new, and referral partners, including reciprocal referral partners and centers of influence. Centers of influence give referrals but generally do not receive them. Reciprocal referral partner relationships include giving and getting referrals, making them an ideal partnership.
3. Develop a Research Process
Schedule at least one meeting each week with an existing client. In addition, schedule time to conduct research with interviewees and referral partners. Your goal is to find out everything you can about your target clients.
Make a list of questions to help you learn more about your ideal client and what they want. If it helps, prepare a sheet of questions beforehand, or use the following sample questions.
Sample Questions to Ask:
- What do you like about your current advisor or money coach (if they have one)?
- Which topic(s) do you want to learn more about?
- What are your three biggest concerns?
- Are you on track to achieving your financial goals?
- Do you use a monthly budget?
- What would you like to change about your situation?
4. Content Marketing
Successful financial professionals understand the value of providing valuable content to potential clients.
They also understand that no matter how many marketing tactics you use, it all comes down to how much value you provide prospective clients.
Nevertheless, here is some content marketing insight to keep in mind.
Choose your delivery format
The financial services industry often provides content through regular newsletters. Other options include blogs, podcasts, and videos. It is critical that you confirm what format they prefer.
Providing weekly content is ideal unless your target audience shares that they prefer a different delivery schedule.
Research and select topics your prospective clients want
The list of financial topics your ideal client wants is endless. By knowing your ideal client, you can narrow the list of topics and focus on providing great content they will enjoy.
For example, some topics that your prospective clients might be searching about can include:
- Budgeting
- Financial planning
- Long-term care
- Investment planning
- Wealth management
- Retirement planning
- Business growth
- Disability insurance
Don’t forget SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO), in the modern days of business and finance, is more important than ever. Coupled with your marketing efforts, when done right, SEO can help businesses efficiently attract their target audience and make more money online.
SEO includes identifying keywords your ideal prospect is searching for on the internet.
Creating content that follows search engine optimization (SEO) SEO guidelines is important.
In addition to sharing your content on your website, share it on different social media platforms.
A lot goes into SEO, but as a rule of thumb, start with researching low-competition, high-volume keywords in your business niche. Once you create an extensive list, create valuable content using those keywords and topics.
Essentially, with this approach, you’re killing two birds with one stone. You’re educating your readers and getting ranked better on search engines.
Include #hashtags
Many experts recommend adding hashtags to your content so search engines will pick it up. For example, if you write about retirement planning, add #retirementplanning. If you are writing about financial freedom, add #financialfreedom to the post.
While providing general financial or investment advice is probably okay, always check with your legal or compliance department or attorney to ensure you are compliant.
Digital Marketing Strategy
One of the primary goals of your financial advisor marketing plan is to stay top of mind.
People need financial services about 3-7% of the year. As a result, if you are not top of mind during this period, they may not think of you and hire someone else. By consistently providing value through your content and social media platforms, you stay top of mind when your prospective client needs help.
Studies show that most prospective clients search for their advisors online before hiring them. For this reason, include steps in your plan to boost your online presence.
However, crafting an effective digital marketing strategy isn’t easy and can include a wide range of complex strategies.
Examples include social media marketing, email marketing, blogging, and more.
5. Additional Marketing Strategies for Financial Advisors
Your marketing efforts should be designed to add value to current and potential clients, convert more prospects to raving clients, and grow your business revenue.
While that is a process, having the right plan can do wonders for the growth of your business. Here are some additional advisor marketing strategies to keep in mind.
Referral marketing and warm introductions
One of the best financial advisor marketing strategies is a plan to get more referrals.
Affluent clients prefer to find their advisors through introductions from friends or current advisors. For that reason, referral marketing makes prospecting easier and allows you to borrow trust until you create your own.
During your annual meeting, ask your clients what would need to occur for them to be comfortable introducing others to you. If they are uncomfortable providing a warm introduction to you, ask them if they belong to any groups or associations that bring in guest speakers. Speaking to groups where your target audience belongs is an effective strategy for meeting more people.
While most financial advisors and coaches seek referrals from traditional sources in their industry, an often-overlooked gold mine is non-traditional partners. For example, if you are a financial professional serving business owners, CPAs and attorneys would be a traditional referral source. A non-traditional source would be a banker, commercial realtor, or business broker.
The advantage of non-traditional referral sources is that they have fewer competitors vying for their referrals. As a result, it is easier to get warm introductions.
Every niche market has traditional and non-traditional referral sources. So have fun and let your creative juices flow as you discover new opportunities.
Give yourself time to let your creative juices flow. Do your best to discover new opportunities that you discover. Remember, the goal is to be open to new ideas that increase your referral marketing opportunities.
Lead generation
Creating a flow of qualified, profitable prospects that want your advice is critical to a successful financial advisor marketing plan.
The goal here is to research your target audience, find out what they need, and position yourself as someone who can solve their problems.
As a general rule of thumb, an effective marketing strategy includes a lead generation plan.
Start with these five core steps in your financial advisor marketing plan. Then test and tweak the process based on what works for your situation:
- 1. The first step is to identify your niche market. You might already know about this, but if you don’t, a quick Google search is the perfect way to start.
- 2. Research, research, research. Find out everything about your market, target audience, and the gaps.
- 3. Third, determine your lead generation baseline (what you are currently doing).
- 4. Fourth, select two lead-generating strategies that work best for you.
- 5. Fifth, add one or two additional prospecting techniques.
It is helpful to add additional strategies that are a natural progression to what you are doing.
For example, if one of your strategies is relationship marketing, consider adding feeder workshops or email marketing to your mix.
If you currently use email marketing, content marketing could be an addition. Or, if you offer feeder workshops, relationship marketing may be your next best step.
The idea is to find out the gaps in your strategies and brainstorm how to fill them. The more your experiment, the faster you’ll know what works and what doesn’t.
Relationship marketing
Most people are starved for attention and connection. And most clients and prospects love receiving a heartfelt card or note.
When most businesses or individuals offer clients their services, they often sound cold and rehearsed rather than warm and connecting. Sounding human and displaying empathy lets your prospects know you care, value them, and want to help them solve their challenges.
The bottom-line results we have seen prove the power of relationship marketing. Service-based professionals have increased revenue by 30-150% by adding heartfelt cards and gifts.
Why are heartfelt connections so meaningful? They allow us to connect to an emotion most humans crave and lack in these digitally crazed times. As someone infamously once said, “People make buying decisions based on emotion, and then they back them up with facts.”
CONCLUSION – FINANCIAL ADVISOR MARKETING IN 5 STEPS
While it may seem overwhelming, start with one of these financial advisor marketing steps. Once you get momentum, add in another step, and so on.
I’ve created this post to help you make an effective financial advisor’s game plan.
This resource is a starting point. I encourage you to experiment, test your plan, measure your results, and then make changes as needed!
The secret is creating a plan and consistently executing it so you can measure your results. Before you know it, you will attract more clients, achieve more results, and generate more revenue.
Click the graphic to download the Advisor Marketing Plan:
