Contact Us

Marketing Plans and Strategies for Financial Advisors

  • By Ironstone
  • |
  • April 3, 2014
Photo credit ©iStock/Getty Images/Thinkstock
Photo credit ©iStock/Getty Images/Thinkstock

With so many means to market your firm, it is easy to get off track by wanting to do it all.  Advisors have more marketing tools and strategies at their disposal than ever before.

Lack of a dedicated professional marketing manager, along with time and knowledge, reduce marketing efforts significantly; creating a recipe for disaster. Hiring a dedicated marketing manager, marketing consultant, or outsourcing your marketing will have a fundamental, positive impact on the bottom line of your firm.

Complete a SWOT analysis and identify your firm goals to lay the foundation of your marketing plan.  Consider specific marketing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats specific to your firm.  

Download the following worksheets to begin your process:

WHEN TO START YOUR MARKETING PLAN

Now! A successful marketing plan is an ongoing process, it should never end.

Top advisors and their marketing teams review and modify existing plans, acquire new marketing ideas, and research marketing trends consistently.  Ideally, your marketing plan should be developed and ready for implementation during the last quarter of the fiscal year. This can be tricky while maintaining strong marketing momentum at the same time. However, it is vital to know — both are a must.

COMPONENTS OF A MARKETING PLAN

After completing a SWOT analysis and the Marketing Goal Planning worksheet, your marketing plan can begin to take shape in the form of a written document. The components of a marketing plan need to include:

  • Executive Summary – A brief introduction summarizing your marketing plan concepts.
  • Goals – Refer to the marketing goal worksheet you completed. Identify your marketing objectives. Your objectives should be clear, measurable, and attainable within a specific time period. Each of the goals you establish need to support your firm’s overall business plan. In addition to identifying objectives, you will need to determine how you will accomplish each objective by creating a strategy and tactic for each.
  • Business Overview – Define your business, including your mission, vision, unique value proposition, and your products and services.
  • Profile Your Current Client Database – Become extremely familiar with your existing clients.  Analyze your clients based on statistical information including: age, gender, profession, income, education level, and demographic location. Segment your clients into groups to determine which services they need from you. Explain what sources will provide you with this information (such as your CRM system) and finally, how you plan to address client acquisition and retention.
  • Identify Your Market/Target Area – Dissect your target market by getting down to the nitty-gritty specifics. In addition to demographic mapping, you will want to include geographical locations. How many people reside in your target area? How many are qualified for your services and what products and services are needed by this group of people? Omitting any of these steps will leave you aiming for a target while wearing a blindfold. Explain what sources you will use to compile accurate information such as the US Census Bureau, purchased lists, or additional sources deemed necessary.
  • Meeting the Needs of Clients and Prospects – Describe how you will meet the needs of your clients and prospects. If you desire to become a trusted, go-to advisor, you need to provide a solution to your clients and prospective clients’ needs. Miscellaneous educational material will be fruitless unless it meets the needs and challenges of your target market.
  • Competitors – Identify who your competitors are and how you differ from them. Look at how promotion methods differ, what your competitors are doing successfully, and what similarities or differences lie in your products and services.
  • Location – Write a description of your business location, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of your locale.
  • Budget – Allocate your marketing dollars into specific categories. Keep in mind current and future marketing avenues you may want to explore including: advertising, promotions, newspaper, magazines, radio, television, telephone book listings, direct mailing, telemarketing, and social media. You will also want to include a budget for client and public events as well as community sponsorships. A best practice is to reserve additional funds for future marketing methods you may implement during the year.
  • Marketing Trends – Allowing time for marketing research is often overlooked or avoided all together.  It is vital to stay abreast of current marketing changes, new opportunities, compliance changes, and monitoring the marketing efforts of your competition

A well-written, comprehensive marketing plan is fundamental to your firm.  It is an all-encompassing document outlininghow you plan to attract and retain clients, how you will differentiate yourself from competitors, and how you will hone in on providing solutions to clients and prospective clients’ needs.

The following worksheets will aid you in identifying strategies and tactics for your marketing plan, strengthening your relationship with clients and prospects, and provide you with a monitoring system to check in on your competition.

Download the following worksheets:

THINK ABOUT IT

There are several other components you may want to include in your marketing plan. Consider creating a section dedicated to brainstorming. This will allow you to add new ideas or marketing methods and opportunities as they arise.

  • A Pie-In-The-Sky List – Include brainstorming ideas to refer to throughout the year.  Don’t leave anything out and dream big!
  • Publications and Speaking Engagements – Include opportunities not included in your initial marketing plan as they arise. Keep in mind speaking engagements or features in local and national industry publications targeted to your market.
  • Awards – If you have never applied for industry awards, consider giving it a try. There are several awards you may qualify for. An industry award for your firm increases credibility, name recognition, and trust.
  • Charitable Organizations – Giving back to the community in which you serve shows you care about the growth and well-being of your community, not just your business.
  • Key Statistics – Including key statistics in your marketing plan will give you an easy reference point when reviewing your plan, developing next year’s plan, or identifying gaps in your existing plan.
BEST PRACTICES IN MARKETING

Once you have prepared the groundwork for your marketing plan, as outlined above, let the fun begin! Start creating your Marketing Calendar. Prepare a year-long marketing calendar by outlining client communication, promotional ideas, seminars, and events. Your marketing calendar should be communicated and shared with each team member in your firm.

WANT MORE?

We have included a sample of best practice marketing plan ideas used by advisors we work with. Here are just a few:

  • Create a Marketing Toolbox – There are an abundance of tools to keep in your tool box. Just as a hammer is essential to a builder, a marketing calendar is essential to a marketing manager and your firm. Your marketing calendar will aid you in executing your marketing plan in a structured manner.
  • Review Marketing Trends and New Opportunities – As CEO of your firm, Office Manager, or Marketing Manager you are well aware of new marketing trends and opportunities presented. Pick and choose new marketing methods and apply them to your strategy. Top advisors and their marketing/sales teams stay well informed by researching new trends coming through the pipeline.
  • Create an Editorial Calendar – If your firm prepares case studies, research papers, writes for local or national publications, engages in social media, or publishes blogs, create an editorial calendar outlining industry topics you will place your focus.
  • Create A Marketing SOP/Workflow – Streamline marketing duties by creating Standard Operating Procedures for marketing functions along with a workflow describing decision making permissions and the link or flow between sales, marketing, and operations.

Download our Marketing Calendar Template: Marketing Calendar Template  

YOU WON’T WANT TO MISS THIS! – INSPIRATIONAL IDEAS FOR YOUR MARKETING TEAM

The team at Ironstone chose one article we felt would inspire your marketing team.  The article is an excerpt from a blog written by Dan Lyons, writer and editor at HubSpot.  In his article, 10 Lessons From Steve Jobs That Every Marketer Must Learn, Lyons tells us:

“Steve Jobs led the greatest turnaround in corporate history, taking a near-bankrupt Apple and turning it into one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world … but he didn’t look that great on paper. He wasn’t an engineer. He couldn’t write a line of code. He didn’t have an MBA. He had no college degree at all. He wasn’t a great manager, in the conventional sense. When it came to the bureaucratic aspects of running an organization, he was useless.”

“So what made him great? His gift, simply put, was marketing. In the words of Guy Kawasaki, who worked under Jobs at Apple: “Steve was the greatest marketer ever.”

Here are 10 marketing lessons you can learn from him:

  • Find good mentors
  • Make a great product
  • Stand for something
  • Spend money
  • Create experiences
  • Keep secrets and build mystery
  • Find an enemy
  • Turn customers into evangelists
  • Don’t talk about products
  • Use pictures, not words

Read the rest of Dan Lyon’s article at HubSpot.

Contact Ironstone for more information in completing a comprehensive marketing plan to help your firm achieve best practice marketing solutions and results. Ironstone has numerous resources and job aides available to guide you in developing your marketing plan. It is important to further your marketing plan by identifying each objective, including progress and results, along with success stories and faux pas.

“There is no such thing as failure. There are only results.” -Anthony Robbins

Question: What challenges do you face in marketing your firm?  Name Recognition, Capabilities Presentation, Branding or Hiring? Let us know. Read more about our coaching and consulting program here

Are you just getting by or are you getting better? Get started today!

Author Bio

Ironstone is a learning and development consultancy with business acumen that translates across many industries. Our focus is on practice management strategies in order to enhance and improve both business and personal life. We support professionals who want major and comprehensive improvements that look at all aspects not just an isolated area for change. Ironstone has identified 4 key performance areas known as the Fundamental 4™, which are required to design, develop, and sustain a successful business.

DefaultBlogImage