Financial Advisor Marketing 101: How to Create a Marketing Plan

If you’re a financial advisor looking to grow your business, you need a marketing plan. Maybe you consider relying on referrals from existing clients as the only marketing you need. Maybe you’re ready to implement a marketing strategy, but you don’t know where to start. Either way you need to sit down and create a marketing plan. Your plan doesn’t need to be perfect to start, but you need to be clear about what results you want to see. This helps you focus and can guide you as you develop your marketing plan. Welcome to Financial Advisor Marketing 101. We’ll start with 3 steps to help you create your marketing plan.

Set goals

Before you can build a marketing plan, you have to be clear about the goals you want to achieve. It’s not enough to say I want to bring in new clients and get more assets under management (AUM). Get specific with your goals, and put some numbers in place. It can be a dollar amount for new AUM or a specific number of new clients. It also helps to set dates/time limits in place so that you can review your metrics and adjust your marketing plan if needed. Setting solid goals now will make it easier to gauge the success of your marketing plan later on.

Find your target

Your marketing plan and your long-term success depend on your understanding of who your ideal client is. This ideal client determines everything from the tone of your messaging to the platforms you use for advertising. This is another area where being broad or generic can do more harm than good. If you can drill down from ideal client to specific niche market, you can target your marketing more precisely. In the long term this can save you money, and result in better conversion rates.  

Use multiple marketing channels

A great marketing plan should be as incident proof as possible. Part of incident proofing your marketing plan is not leaning too heavily on any one marketing channel. Using multiple platforms isn’t the same as using multiple marketing channels. Facebook, Google Ads, your website, and even emails are all part of the online marketing channel. In order to keep the leads coming in you should focus on other methods such as direct mail marketing, in person/virtual events, and referrals. Spreading your marketing efforts across multiple channels, protects the top of your lead funnel from unforeseen circumstances. 

Creating a functional scalable marketing plan is a process, and it takes time and effort to get it right. If you want to grow your business, the time, money, and effort are well worth it. Want a personalized Financial Advisor Marketing 101 guide? Contact us to schedule a consultation or assessment.