Advisers who kick themselves for failing to adequately market their services and blame a lack of time should consider putting a seasoned tool of the marketing profession to work for them.
Marketing calendars make efficient use of an adviser's time and keep this important sales function occurring all year through, instead of just the occasions when the prospect pipeline withers and advisers turn their attention to filling it again.
“We recommend marketing calendars because if you don't have a plan in place for what you'll do and when, then you get busy and it falls by the wayside,” said Robert Sofia, co-founder of Platinum Advisor Strategies. “It's best to have a consistent, ongoing marketing program at a high level to keep business at a high level.”
Advisers should strategize about all the client communications, events, white papers, videos,
networking opportunities, advertising and other promotional activities for the year and plot them on a calendar up to 12 months ahead.
Assign the tasks needed to accomplish each activity, relying as much as possible on staff to plan details of the events, provide content, schedule meetings, etc.
Suzanne Muusers, owner of Prosperity Coaching, said the calendar itself should only take an hour or two to create. The most time should be spent planning out the marketing goals and tactics for accomplishing them.
For instance, advisers may decide they want to better use their relationships with centers of influence to generate more referrals. To achieve that, an adviser can commit to taking an accountant, lawyer or other professional out to lunch twice a month, and then should mark when to send the invitations and book the occasions on the calendar. The adviser's assistant can help by scheduling the appointments, she said.
The calendar is the step in the planning process that holds an adviser's feet to the fire.
(More: Conquer the difficulties of web writing to draw prospects)
“The biggest downfall for advisers is that they create a marketing plan but don't implement it,” Ms. Muusers said. “When you have a marketing calendar with all the actions for each strategy or tactic and you assign those actions, it's more likely to be done.”
A firm's budget will have a lot to do with what's included in its marketing calendar, Mr. Sofia said. His firm recommends advisers spend about 10% of gross revenue dedicated to marketing.
Smaller firms should be concentrating on cheaper activities that can be high impact, such as events, including charity events where attendees buy tickets that cover the costs; videos for their website; and social media pursuits that result in engagement, such as mining LinkedIn for professional introductions, Mr. Sofia said.
(More: Upgrade your website or drive away business)
Firms with bigger budgets can consider adding the more expensive, low-impact endeavors like billboards and radio ads, he said.
Mr. Sofia also recommends advisers think about seasonal activities for some months, such as sponsoring a shred day in April after the federal tax deadline or writing a “half-time report” for clients in July to discuss the state of the markets.
Experts also recommend re-evaluating the calendar every year to see which activities were most worthwhile and which may have been a waste of time or money.
