Which Marketing Strategy Is Right For My RIA

As a financial advisor, you need to market your services with a comprehensive strategy if you want to grow your business.

But no one said you have to do it all yourself! You're busy doing what you do best—financial planning and advising.

When you choose the best marketing tools for your goals, you can focus on doing the work your prospects and clients expect from you.

From social media to seminar marketing funnels, we want to help you choose the right marketing tools for your strategies.

Whether it's Facebook ads, social media campaigns, or email and direct mail marketing, we can help you focus your marketing efforts on the best channels and platforms for your advisory. 

Marketing Financial Services: Integrating Old School and New School Approaches

Some marketing gurus have implied that direct mail marketing is dead.

They rightfully push email campaigns, social media outreach, and video content because these are some of the most popular, and effective, marketing tools for most brands.

But your advisory, and the financial services industry, are not "most brands".

We know that not only is direct mail alive and well, it's still an integral part of successfully marketing financial services.

That's why we offer tools to support the proven "old school" marketing like your direct mail campaigns.

Our seminar marketing, social media campaigns, and other "new school" digital tools work in conjunction with your existing efforts to build your brand.

We're different because we focus exclusively on financial services marketing and we integrate our digital marketing with your current marketing campaigns.

Here are some of the most powerful marketing tools we use—tools you should expect to be in any marketing consultant's arsenal:

Direct Mail and Email Aren't Exclusive:
Combining These Tools Gives Your Marketing Efforts More Impact

Here's how to harnesses the power of email for your advisory:

1. Personalization

We all want to be understood and acknowledged.

People are choosing brands more for their relevance to consumer needs than for their loyalty and incentive programs.

We "speak" to your prospects and clients in language they understand and craft emails relevant to the recipients' needs and where they are on the client journey.

2. Targeting

Some marketing consultants still use the "shotgun" approach.

They advise you to send more mail with more information for the greatest reach. While that may seem like a good tactic on the surface, this approach wastes time and money and the results are often minimal.

We recommend that you focus on the most relevant offer with targeted marketing and create simple calls to action that get results.

Sending the right message to the right people at the right time is critical. Nowhere is the success of this approach more evident than marketing targeted specifically for Millennials.

The Postal Service found that 62% of millennials visited a store in the past month based on calls to action they received via direct mail.

3. Integrating with Direct Mail

One study found that people spend 25% more when direct mail is used with email marketing.

Your marketing efforts are more successful, and you enjoy a greater ROI when you fuse traditional marketing techniques with modern digital tools.

When you pull it all together using the right timing to integrate email marketing to support your direct mail and other outbound marketing efforts.  

The future of email marketing will be all about data, personalization, content and automation. While many marketing firms continue to focus on the out-dated model of the four Ps: product, price, placement and promotion, your email marketing campaigns should focus on the new model of the six Cs:

It's not enough for consumers to simply be aware of your product or service.

You must establish a connection with them through meaningful and personalized contact to begin creating relationships.

Savvy marketers create customized email marketing campaigns to build communities that create loyalty and promote ambassadorship.

Seminars and Webinars Help Financial Advisors Build Relationships

Ask most marketers about the relevance of seminars and seminar marketing, and you might get answers similar to their take on direct mail.

We've heard the same things you have: seminars are too old school, too expensive with a low ROI, and too time consuming.

But seminars are still a valuable sales tool for financial advisors, especially at a local level.

Much like direct mail and email, seminars and webinars may seem to be on opposite ends of the spectrum in marketing, but they both have a place in a financial advisor's marketing strategy. 

Traditional Marketing vs. Marketing Funnels

The best way to make your seminars and webinars successful is with tailor-made marketing funnels designed for the financial services prospect.

Using a marketing funnel for your events will help you target the right prospects and guide them toward conversion.

The Marketing Funnel Isn't New

Since the end of the 20th century, the model for marketing funnels highlighted the stages of a customer’s relationship with a business. The “AIDA” model dictated the framework of these funnels:

• Awareness: The prospect has a problem. They start looking for solutions.
• Interest: The prospect shows interest in services or products.
• Desire: The prospect evaluates and compares brands.
• Action: The prospect makes a purchase.

But modern marketing funnels designed specifically for financial advisors are new—and improved.

The Modern Marketing Funnel: Enhancing Traditional Techniques with a Digital Update 

Studies show that businesses lose up to $1.6 trillion a year when they can't retain customers.

When you implement modern marketing funnels, you can avoid some of those losses.

Add "loyalty" and "advocacy" to a traditional marketing funnel and you get better leads, more conversions, and greater retention.

The modern marketing funnel is a carefully designed road map for the client journey.

Each section moves your prospects along the path to becoming a client by acknowledging their needs at each stage.

Here is what the modern marketing funnel looks like:

• Awareness: Prospects realize they have a problem thanks to branded content.
• Consideration: Prospects are persuaded by brand influencers and social proof because of social media and other channels.
• Conversion: Prospects become clients thanks to simple and logical marketing funnels.
• Loyalty: Clients are loyal because of engagement such as regular promotions, email campaigns, and social media interaction.
• Advocacy: Satisfied clients support your future marketing by being brand ambassadors—multiplying the ROI on your marketing spend.

A marketing funnel applies to almost any prospect and client interaction.

Whether you’re looking for online sales, local traffic for your firm, or capturing important marketing data, you need a marketing funnel.

Marketing funnels produce data that can show you where you're losing prospects and where prospects keep moving along the journey to becoming a client to fine-tune your strategy.

You can also use funnels to help streamline your appointments, generate leads, and more.

If you need to get prospective clients from point "A" to point "B" to achieve a specific goal, funnels are the most effective way to make that happen. 

Appointment funnels and lead funnels save you time and energy by keeping the focus on the most viable prospects and helping you nurture those prospects along the client journey.

While there are no inherent negatives for using lead generation and appointment funnels, there is a very important aspect that must be in place to benefit from these marketing efforts:

For sales and marketing funnels to work, you must have a strong process for closing the deal as prospects near the bottom of the funnel. Sales, marketing, and customer service must be aligned to make any marketing funnel effective.

Eight Digit Media builds marketing campaigns with proven techniques and tools like modern marketing funnels. We'll help you identify the right marketing solutions for your advisory and help you automate everything from email campaigns to your social media presence.