Advertising Doesn’t Work for Financial Advisors?
No, it works GREAT if you do it right.
I’ve had several conversations with Advisors who tell me “Advertising Doesn’t Work.”
Maybe it’s just me, but you have to just not be paying attention in our industry to not know that online and offline marketing for Financial Advisors are everywhere you look. Whether it’s in the mailbox (dinner meeting at Ruth’s Chris anyone) or, in the Facebook facebook feed. Publicity? Well, every day on local, regional, and national media. I often have fox business on the TV in my office running all day while I work, host zoom meetings or whatever. There’s a constant parade of Wealth Manager’s as experts for any and all financial issues.
So, there’s marketing for our industry in Forbes, Fortune, Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, “experts” on Radio, TV, Newspapers, Blogs, Magazines and more and of course all over online.
Just try a simple search on Google – I just did: “College Financial Panner Advisor” as a muddled key word. There’s Pay-Per-Click Ads (www.Zoefin.com in 1st, www.gofinancialadvice.com in 2nd) and a bunch of on-target organic listings (www.clearviewwealthadvisors.
I did just a bit of research on just one of the tools that I subscribe to: SRDS.com (Standard Rate and Data) and there’s a bunch or relevant “Response Lists” as well as magazine subscriber lists, online magazines, and much more.
Go to Amazon: a slew of various books trying to troll for prospects and, frankly mostly there just as an after thought – mostly used as “lead magnets” and as pass alongs for clients to create referrals.
Let me give you a little direct response secret. Smart companies in the direct response field will run a mail campaign a time or two to test. They’ll run a series of ads on social media tracking results. And, of course google is built for immediate and constant testing. If you see something in your mailbox month after month or, on major media over and over that means it’s working. That it’s returning a positive Return on Investment.
It’s certainly true that you can buy an a few ads on facebook, as an example and spend money and have it not work. In that example what does not work mean? You didn’t get clicks? The conversion rate on your landing page was bad? The leads didn’t convert to appointments? You ended up with a bunch of unqualified prospects? Or, you just suck at closing them? Where’s the problem?
The reality is that if you really define the WHO – who is YOUR ideal client?
Then you find the right MESSAGE as “bait” to get them to “Raise their Hand”
Then you tune and tweak your follow-up systems (people + automation)
And, CLOSE.
Then you can get just about any media to work IF it’s one that targets your ideal client.
Just about every failed campaign that I’ve viewed fails BIG on at least one of these factors. The wrong media for the desired audience. Crappy bait to get them to respond. Inadequate follow-up and nurture systems.
I could go on and on but to summarize, advertising works. It’s working for our industry just about everywhere you look. If yours isn’t working then it’s more likely you just haven’t really learned how to intelligently focus your efforts. It’s a matter of numbers. You must constantly test and make sure that at any step that your cost per sale creates a positive ROI then back track every step of the way so that your cost per click, lead, appointment, meeting all end up in line as well.
That’s something that requires A LOT of expertise along with focus on the numbers to accelerate testing.
We’d be happy to give you a free review of your marketing efforts and some likely very valuable ideas for improving your advertising: Grab our free success kit and schedule your time at: http://www.
Stephen Oliver
CEO
Wealth Mastery
StephenOliver@
www.AdvisorWealthMastery.com
