By Mike Schaffman, Vice President of Sales & Marketing at Simplicity Lone Beacon
Advisors who can see the parallels that exist between the servicing of their clients and the sales and marketing engines that lift their overall business are primed for strategic growth. Why? Because the value clients see in a fiduciary who comprehensively manages their financial future is the same value that advisors can receive from committed partners who create and nurture leads to conversion and beyond.
The most efficient and effective ways for advisors to accomplish this is by seeing the full picture. By providing end-to-end support in a comprehensive manner, they can truly help those they serve. The same goes for an advisor’s sales and marketing system. Whether the engine is built in-house or through a trusted strategic partner, the more comprehensive (end-to-end) it is, the greater the chances of accomplishing their goals and seeing bottom line growth.
So, You Had a New Website Built, Great… Now What?
Hopefully you checked the boxes on the three core principles of a website: Design and Aesthetics, Ergonomics and Organization, & Lead Capture Mechanisms. Nevertheless, it’s launched live, and it (hopefully) represents your brand and you’re (hopefully) receiving leads from your site. Remember, this platform is the epicenter of your business, serving as an on-demand engagement hub for both clients and prospects.
Make sure you have a trusted partner watching over your site, hosted on a dedicated server with routine software and plugin updates being made. Make sure you’re continuously updating your site, incorporating videos, timely blogs, and downloadable educational resources. Funnel your event registrations through your site, create SEO friendly content, remarket to all qualified site visitors, and truly leverage your website as the core foundation to your sales and marketing efforts.
Then, You Sent Out an Email to the Database, Great… Now What?
Once again, congratulations on checking off the boxes. You created an email, you updated your database list, and you clicked send. You’ve established an additional communication channel with your clients and prospects, but the way in which you use your email vessel will be a turning point for bottom line growth.
Content is king, everyone knows that, but measuring engagement is how you can determine what are the best types of topics and calls-to-action. Seeing a timeline history of what users are engaging with, being notified in real-time when they are highly engaged, and monitoring overall open/click/deliverability rates are just a few of the ways to capitalize on an email database.
For existing clients, a strategic weekly nurturing campaign will help increase share of wallet and referrals. For existing and new prospects, a well-calculated sequence of emails welcoming them and immersing them into your firm’s brand will help accelerate their customer (buying) journey.
You Also Started Digital Advertising, Great… Now What?
Taking the leap to putting your firm’s brand and message out there in the Facebook, LinkedIn, Google universe can be a daunting undertaking. In a lot of cases, it’s the first-time advisors have opened up their marketing budgets to incorporate digital ads. Whether the campaign strategy is purely branding and awareness or being used as direct new lead generation for a dinner event, it takes a team of experts to properly implement and manage the platform.
Make sure you have someone monitoring, on a daily basis, your spend level and the different audiences ads are being served to. Metrics like reach, frequency, impressions, and click-through-rates are crucial to understand in order to optimize campaigns. The cost per lead metric can be one worth celebrating, initially, but taking it a step further to learn about the lead quality and status will be where many fall short.
Finally, You Started Receiving Leads, Great… Now What?
This is truly where the end-to-end support advisories are missing comes into play. First, make certain leads are being received in real-time and are part of a timely (lead intake – lead dissemination – lead follow up) process. As simple as it may sound, following the process and updating CRM status’ on leads throughout their customer journey will be critical in the evaluation of sales infrastructure and ROI from marketing and advertising platforms. Also, having a data platform readily available will help in evaluating areas of opportunity to capitalize on.
Remember, not every person is ready to do business on day one. Having an email system in place is great for seamless touchpoints, but incorporating additional nurturing like with text messaging will help add fuel to the fire.
No matter what you’re doing or where you’re doing it, start the end-to-end support process by asking yourself: Do I know where the last domino will fall?
About the Author: As VP of Sales & Marketing, Mike Schaffman pioneered Simplicity Lone Beacon’s core marketing platform, creating content and connecting media and broadcast components with a turnkey digital solution. After strategically extracting, analyzing, and applying first party data across the core marketing platform, Mike helped transform Simplicity Lone Beacon’s offerings and solutions into one of the leading independent financial advisor marketing tools that exist in the country today.
