A marketing plan for financial advisors: Business goals and key performance indicators

Welcome to part one of our new five-part Action! series, A marketing plan for financial advisors.

Throughout this series, we’ll explore the fundamentals of developing and executing a marketing plan for your firm to help you drive engagement, brand awareness and, ultimately, business growth.

Each article will detail an essential step in the marketing plan process and build upon the last, enabling you with the foundational, tactical and strategic resources you need to harness the power of marketing for your business.

In this comprehensive guide, we will delve into the crucial aspects of creating a strategic marketing plan tailored specifically to the needs of financial advisors. 

Business goals 

Every marketing plan starts with establishing the business goals that will form the foundation of your entire strategy. Consistently referring back to these goals will help you drive and measure success throughout the process and understand if, when and where you may need to shift your areas of focus.

Establishing clear objectives and metrics for success will pave the way for a purposeful marketing plan that propels your practice to new heights in today's competitive financial landscape.

Examples of marketing goals:

• Add 25 new clients
• Generate $500K in new recurring revenue
• Increase brand awareness
• Keep operational marketing costs under $100K annually
• Reduce sales cycle length by 25%

The key to establishing your goals is being realistic about your timeline and the resources available to you and being aware of past performance.

If your goal is to add 25 new clients this year, start by looking back at the number of clients you added last year. Where did that new business come from? How much effort did you and your team require to win those clients? Is that effort scalable to 25 without interrupting service to current clients or significantly impacting firm operations?

While your goals should be as specific and measurable as possible, some marketing initiatives, such as increasing brand awareness, can't be precisely quantified. That doesn’t mean they aren’t just as important as the others, but you might have to look for more qualitative signals that your marketing is working.

Key performance indicators (KPIs)

Understanding how you’ll measure your progress toward your goals is critical – this is where setting your key performance indicators, or KPIs, comes into play. KPIs are individual metrics that measure the various elements of a marketing plan. Each KPI maps to a specific goal, and each goal may have multiple KPIs. 

Depending on your goals, you can leverage leading or lagging indicators to understand performance and drive strategy better. 

Leading indicators predict future performance, including website traffic, social media engagement, and email open rates. These metrics help you identify and capitalize on things that are working or surface areas that need adjustment. 

Lagging indicators measure past performance, including sales, revenue, and customer retention. They can help you identify the effectiveness of past marketing initiatives and provide insights you can leverage when building new plans.

As you think through your business goals and the key metrics, ensure you aren’t doing so in a silo. Your team, your year-over-year performance and even feedback from your current clients can help guide the focus of your marketing plan.

Set a path to growth with some clear goals in mind

Here is a case study of success: One financial advisory firm sought the expertise of a marketing agency to revamp its digital presence and implement a robust lead-generation strategy. The firm aimed to capture its unique value propositions, effectively communicate with its target audiences and attract high-net-worth investors.

The marketing agency began by delving into the advisory firm’s client pain points, aspirations, and motivations. Next, compelling messaging was created to engage and connect the firm with clients. This included redesigning their visual identity, overhauling the website to enhance user experience, aligning with the new messaging, and effectively showcasing the advisor's expertise and offerings. Advisor's social media profiles were revamped to ensure consistency across all digital channels. Immediate results included over a 100% lift in social media engagement, impressions and website traffic, increasing by 22%. 

With the messaging and brand foundation in place, the team shifted focus to developing a lead-generation strategy via paid ads. Utilizing customized content offers, such as ebooks, whitepapers and webinars, compelling ad campaigns were crafted to capture the attention of the desired audience of high-net-worth individuals. 

The lead generation strategy utilizing paid ads generated a steady influx of high-quality leads, resulting in a substantial boost in prospective clients. Within six months, 60% of new leads came from paid media. Those prospects were served a series of email nurture campaigns strategically crafted to guide them through the sales funnel, gradually building trust and positioning the financial advisor as a knowledgeable resource.

Through collaborative efforts, the financial advisor experienced a transformation in their digital marketing strategy, achieving notable success in capturing their target audience's attention, generating leads and ultimately growing their client base.

Part 2: Identifying and segmenting your target audience 

In the next part of this marketing series for financial advisors, we’ll explore ways to identify and segment your target audience. The task of understanding your ideal clients and breaking them down into distinct segments is critical. You must hone in on their needs, preferences and behaviors.

Remember, building an intentional marketing plan requires a deep understanding of your clients, and by implementing these strategies, you will position yourself as a trusted advisor in the financial industry. Stay tuned for our next installment, where we will guide you through the process of identifying and segmenting your target audience for maximum marketing impact.