Marketing is key for financial advisor firm growth, but getting a return on investment can be challenging. Anthony Stitch, executive managing director at MarketCounsel, suggests there is a business strategy advisors can adopt.
Advisors are not always marketers, they don't always know where to start, especially in this modern marketing era.
Modern marketing is a scientifically based strategy, ensuring you get the best return on investment (ROI) for your marketing dollars.
So how do you start? Click on the video below to watch the full interview.
Transcript:
Advisors struggle with marketing. Part of that's fear-based and also part 'where do we start' as an advisor, especially when you want to grow your practice. Typically, you're not a marketer; you have a very different skill set as an advisor. A lot of that's fear, and we have to take that away from the equation. And we talked about this on a panel about authenticity and how if you embrace authenticity, the fear should go away – because you become you on the screen, on the podcast, and in the written form on the website.
The second part, though, is where do we start? And that's a fundamental question about when you want to grow your business and how you grow your business. I always advise advisors to begin with a technological foundation. How will you build out and distribute the content you wish to serve to the audiences you're trying to attract? Once you build that out, you start adding human capital on top of that, and as you grow, you need to start creating frameworks. Strategic, let's call them best practices, to make sure as you grow and expand your marketing team, they're all singing from the same hymnal. So that could be brand guidelines followed by or preceded by an archetype study, a color study, or even a naming study. It really boils down to strategically embracing best practices to ensure you're growing – you're setting yourself up for growth and success.
Modern Marketing is funny because I am super old, and when I started marketing, I was worrying about the Pantone color matching on the brochure. I was literally in the press rooms, and they called me Picasso Tony because I would scrutinize any different color change. And I remember my boss at the time, later on, said 50% of our marketing works. Now if you tell me which 50% that is, we'll do more of it. That was traditional marketing, brand development - a kind of prey and spray.
Modern marketing has evolved – the last 20 years – to now scientifically based strategy for marketing and maximizing the dollars and how you invest those dollars. So modern marketing is about tracking the efficacy of your campaigns, how much it costs to acquire a client and making sure that you're getting the best ROI. And now, again, this goes back to the fear thing. You're probably thinking to yourself, oh my goodness, that is terrifying. Where do I start? It's not as hard or complex as you think. But modern marketing is truly leveraging new digital tools, of course, but making sure those dollars are invested wisely and giving you a good return on investment.
So an example of modern marketing, in action, done right – I mean, everyone's embracing video and podcasting – I think there is this idea that I prefer modern marketing, leveraging the same content, but manipulating it in such a way so the avenues that you're putting up posting it on – say its LinkedIn, or TikTok, or anything else for that matter – you evolve that content based on that audience type that leverages that application.
So that's modern marketing, using your voice, your brand voice following specific guidelines, but then manipulating that based on that. Then you track that you see how well it responds. I gave an example on stage about how with me, I remembered I joined Twitter and I was all professional and buttoned up as I look today, I guess – but it was all about planning and statistics and custodians and all this stuff and nobody followed me. Everyone's like, look at this loser. And then I started making fun of myself on Twitter and talking about my family and now I have 4000 followers. That goes back to authenticity. But the idea is making sure that voice that message is going to engage with the people you want to talk with. So those are a couple of examples of modern marketing strategies. But, I mean, there's so many out there and it's so exciting and quite frankly, it's exciting for the industry. We're typically an industry of conformity and now we're kind of breaking through that and getting past that and I love to see it.
