Marketing Power for Financial Advisors

Chapter 1: This Could Be You You may have said something like this: "The only thing I lack in my practice is marketing to develop a prospect flow, or we could double our practice easily." Or, perhaps, you said, "I know I need to specialize, but I am not sure where to start." You see yourself as just another look-alike advisor with an all-things-to-all-people approach. Or you may fall into the category of many advisors who try to select marketing programs or tactics BEFORE they understand their market or grasp the message that will resonate with their audience. As a result, you are stuck with a hit-or-miss marketing program that wastes your resources. Or, possibly, you count on only one way of reaching your market, which can derail your chance of achieving your goals. Or you may expect branding – your logo, company name, and a slogan – to kindle your marketing momentum. You may have spent years or even decades building the practice up to this point, and you are looking for a smart road map to double assets under management. You may feel that you are throwing money heedlessly at marketing, and you don't want to squander your resources on trial and error. We thank the financial advisors we have worked with for investing their hearts in making a difference in their clients' lives and for dreaming about their own future. We are grateful for their readiness to try out the principles, strategies, and tactics that you will discover in this book. We chose stories that would demonstrate that you don't need any special advantage to take your practice to the next level. Through their examples our clients encourage you to break out into new areas of growth. We have changed their names to respect our clients’ privacy and to enable us to share as many insights and ideas as we can. Over the years some individuals have brought particular expertise in marketing to the advisor growth challenge and the problem of attracting a stream of ideal prospects. They may have carried out primary research through numerous interviews on what is working for high growth advisory practices. Others have sought solutions from other industries and introduced those to financial advisors. And others have followed in detail what worked for a single practice over many market cycles, created a “playbook,” and shared that with others. Still others have gotten in the trenches with individual advisors and worked on their behalf to transform their practices, forming a storehouse of case studies with their results. Well, what if you did all of the above and focused on distilling this activity and experience into a marketing system for financial advisors? That's what you will find here. Planning for Her Differentiation As a client, Emily came to us with an underlying grasp of what she’d like her financial advisory practice to be. Yet her focus and her actions were scattered. Our job was to listen so that we could pick out the threads of her desire for her practice. Then, we helped her weave those strands into the special experience she wanted to create for clients and prospects. Now Emily’s Story In Her Words The Problem: “Developing my marketing was a big task, and sometimes it seemed overwhelming. All these ideas were swimming around, and I didn’t know whether they were good and worth pursuing or a waste of time. "I just reacted to ideas without having any clear direction." The Aha: “Sometimes I felt that what I did was no different from every other financial advisor. Then, I began to work with the Hansons. They helped me pull the pieces together and gain real differentiation. Now my unique positioning is generating true excitement." The Payoff: “Equally important, having my differentiation gives me clarity. The marketing ideas that weren’t worthwhile just fell away. Now I have a focused system, and my production is up a bunch in only a few months!” Producing Powerful Packaging for Growth Jeff and his partner had a promising practice in a large, competitive city. They wanted to direct their practice away from a heavy reliance on insurance to gain a majority of their work from financial planning (both have CFP® certification along with other credentials). While they had deep experience in their field along with years of visibility in their community and they went to extraordinary lengths for their clients, they weren't sure how to create a motivating message. When they talked with us, they focused on packaging their practice (communicating their unique story) with a capabilities deck, a custom website, and a brochure. We recommended generating their Growth Foundation first: identifying their target audience and refining their differentiation before creating their communications. Here's how Jeff summed up the outcome of building their Growth Foundation and creating the packaging that followed: "Our assets have doubled in 2.5 years, and much of the growth can be attributed to help from Shirley Hanson and Hanson Marketing in packaging our offering and clarifying who we are. Without the marketing language and materials that she has created, we would not have achieved so much." Promoting to Attract a Stream of Qualified Prospects Eager to Meet with Him Imagine a dream ad that prompts 1 or 2 qualified prospects to call you each and every week and request an appointment to meet with you in your office. Ron's ad, a 30-second radio spot, began with a gut-wrenching question. Not a hit-or-miss attempt, he fine-tuned the ad to connect with his desired audience, empathize with their pain, promote a specific call to action, and add a sense of urgency. In fact, the sense of urgency was so compelling that when prospects called they often repeated those four almost magical words of urgency from the ad. The radio ad could have been a post card to a targeted list, an ad in a local newspaper, a TV commercial, a letter, or something else. Behind the results stood a deep understanding of the advisor's audience of pre-retirees and a development of his differentiation. Simply, the brief radio ad gets results because of the marketing commitment that defines Ron's practice. In the few years since we began to work with him assets under management went up 50 percent and income increased 67 percent.