If you are a financial advisor the ability to market yourself is central to the success of your business and as important as your professional competences, because it allows you to reach toward and win over clients. Even if you are offering excellent services, the relevant investors in your area have to know about your practice in order to contact you. There are a variety of approaches that can help you better position yourself as a company and separate you from the competition such as banks or certified public accountants.
One route to take is marketing to the existing clients. It may seem an obvious approach but in reality is one of the biggest untapped opportunities available. Financial advisors do not reach toward existing clients because they don’t want to bother them, do not want to appear salesy or don’t want to weaken their trust. You should consider if your clients are buying everything they should from you and if they know all the offerings you have. Your existing and past clients are a segment the marketing team should focus on. If you’re not reaching to them, the competitors are likely to do so.
It is also a question of what information do you want to distribute to the prospective clients. Besides credentials, most people want to know your story and how you can help them. Financial advisors offer different services. You have to show them your services and the unique value you can offer them so that your brand can reach them. Too many financial advisors are only talking about themselves in their marketing materials, instead of outlining their clients and the challenges they face. Let them know why they should work for you and your strategy of solving their problems or at least easing them.
Sponsoring a local team or events can make your name known to a lot of potential clients and shows your support in the local community. People want to assign a face to a name in order to be comfortable of trusting a person with their money. By sponsoring and attending events you can make true relations with clients. Libraries, senior centers and other community organizations usually allow local seminars on topics that are of interest to residents and also market them so you just have to show up, present relevant content and meet prospective clients.
The digital technological advancements have made the online medium every bit as important as traditional approaches to networking such as attending meetings or getting client referrals. A company website that has online services together with a professional social media campaign can allow you to do more with you marketing budget and increase your visibility to clients regardless of their location. Professional societies such as the Financial Planning Association and other groups can offer you marketing resources and instruments and allow you to exchange ideas.
A common approach is to use newsletters to keep your target market informed and engaged. A monthly newsletter is an efficient and affordable way to showcase your professional abilities and state to customers and prospects the reasons why they should be doing business with you. All aspects of newsletter publishing should be considered such as purpose, costs, distribution, content, style and recipients.
A webinar is more affordable than hosting an event and it offers educational content to clients while still accomplishing the marketing objectives of the company. Webinars allow more flexibility and can have a greater attendance than a meeting on the same topic. Business owners and executives can stay at work while participating and are less likely to leave early. Webinars are more proactive in improving and discovering financial solutions.
If you are targeting local customers, you have to make sure that your business is listed in as many online directories as possible. There are online tools such as Yext that allow you to scan several sites so you can see where you show up and if the information is updated. In order to establish an online presence you can also reach out to journalists from local newspapers or to organizations that have a financial blog with publications about financial planning, retirement saving or investing. Financial and investment professionals can also use Facebook to run targeted ads. These ads can be sent to prospects who live near your practice and have a specific level of income. You have to verify that the imagery, content and special offers in the ad correspond to the webpage where your clients land on.
Another approach is to partner with influencers. The reason why influencers are powerful is that they have a personal and customized way of conducting marketing activities that many businesses can’t replicate. Influencers can help you gain credibility with new customers, be more visible and help you with creating quality content for promoting your company. The best influencers to choose are the ones active in your area, so they can help you reach a new audience and efficiently spread the word about your financial services.