By Mike Schaffman, Simplicity Lone Beacon’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing.
Many advisories will celebrate the acquisition of a new client, as they should, but what’s often overlooked is the fact that the customer journey is just heating up. Creating great experiences enables the customer advocacy phase of their journey. Here are two helpful ways for an advisor to boost customer advocacy.
We are all social creatures. No matter if you sway to the introverted side or are more extroverted, people need (and want) to be around other people in some way. Our culture has evolved alongside technology making it easier for people to communicate. Part of social interaction includes sharing positive and negative experiences with one another, oftentimes leading people to act based on what someone else is saying or doing.
Advocacy is typically the final stage of a customer’s journey, occurring well past the point of purchase and initial impressions. It includes servicing clients outside the confines of whatever they originally engaged with and purchased. In other words, this stage is a company’s opportunity to go above and beyond by fostering relationships and strengthening client’s ties to their brand. It’s also a time when client satisfaction, retention, and referrals become critical.
So, given that everyone is sharing their experiences with each other, no matter what product or service they purchase, don’t neglect this important phase of your customer’s journey. Here are two helpful ways advisors can boost customer advocacy for their firms.
Number 1: Establish and Grow Your Digital Relationships.
Assuming you’re already delivering world class, personal, timely, and effective service to your clients, it’s important to make sure you translate that to the digital realm.
First, ensure that you have a robust content creation and distribution platform. If you’re not creating consistent, high-quality, engaging content for your audience, whether it’s in written or video form, then start there. In a recent article, “How to Craft Headlines That Generate Results”, Marcus Roth discusses the language used in marketing copywriting and its impacts on the effectiveness of the message. Content is a great way to build an emotional connection with your audience. When used effectively, powerful messaging will engage and motivate users to take action. Part of those actions will include the sharing of content across their network of family, friends, and co-workers—the advocacy phase. This leads to more social proof surrounding your capabilities as an advisor, thus generating and sharing more customer success stories.
The key to disseminating those success stories comes from paving the pathways for organic sharing. Your database email marketing system, SMS text messages, and social media channels will be the most efficient ways to distribute this content and build those pathways. With a minimum weekly cadence of postings and deployments, you allow your brand and expertise to stay relevant throughout your customers’ journeys. The more valuable the content, the more chance you have of boosting your customer’s advocacy of your brand. In the end, better experiences with your company, whether digitally or in-person, create more loyal customers who will essentially act as spokespeople and champions for your brand.
Number 2: Leverage Testimonials and Client Advocate (Referral) Programs.
Client referrals have long been among the top sources of new business for advisors. Why? because we’re all social creatures and will listen to trusted human sources of information when making a purchasing decision. Now, with the expansion of the SEC marketing rules, advisors have the opportunity to leverage customer advocacy in ways that have never been allowed before. Here are a couple of quick tips to maximize testimonials and referral programs.
- Identify your ideal customer profile.
- Use the Pareto principle (i.e. the 80/20 rule) that states how on average, 80% of your revenue usually comes from your top 20% of clients.
- Cater to these clients by first examining their traits, interests, needs, and preferences.
- Create a referral program, starting with a dedicated landing page, to drive customers to share your brand and process with their friends, family members, and co-workers.
- Use email communication and annual reviews/check-ins to push clients to the easy-to-use referral platform.
- Consider referral events, incentives and different client advocate tiers for them to unlock with more and more referrals provided.
- Start collecting testimonials from your entire client database
- Consider a tailored survey platform to gather insights into your client’s experiences.
- Utilize their responses across various marketing and advertising platforms to build social proof and interaction (and don’t forget about compliance).
Remember, it takes time to fully understand and optimize your customer’s journey. Bringing clients past the point of acquisition to true customer advocacy of your brand will help you realize more scalable growth opportunities for your firm.
About the Author: Mike Schaffman joined Simplicity Lone Beacon in 2015, pioneering their core marketing platform, creating content and connecting media and broadcast components with a turnkey digital solution. Mike helped transform Simplicity Lone Beacon’s offerings and solutions into one of the leading independent financial advisor marketing services in the country today. When he’s not in the office, Mike enjoys playing golf and hockey and likes to experiment in the kitchen.
