To Build Your Business, Build Your Brand

It's easy to think of marketing as a necessary evil or an expense with which your practice must contend. But well-designed and executed marketing is essential if you want a healthier, more successful practice.

One of the biggest mistakes financial professionals make is overlooking the critical role marketing plays in building a thriving practice.

Marketing defines the benefits of a given brand (you) and attracts clients through persuasion and education. The goal of a well-executed marketing plan is to engender trust and help prospects discover your unique solutions to their problems.

Marketing assists you in getting found both online and offline by people who want what only you can offer. It serves to illuminate, differentiate, and elevate by using different types of quality content to establish who you are, why you're distinct, and why prospects should begin a relationship with you. Marketing initiatives break down barriers that impede sales and help make the closing process more efficient and productive.

Unfortunately, many advisors look at their marketing as an annoyance or unnecessary expense. Or, they have unrealistic expectations that marketing should have prospects breaking down their doors, checks in hand, clamoring to become clients. The reality is that practical financial services marketing sets the stage for sales in more subtle ways.

1. Marketing informs and educates.

Financial services marketing should provide enough education that prospective clients have a solid understanding of an advisor's money philosophy, the products used, and the plan's execution.

That doesn't mean, however, that it has to be dry, dull, or buttoned-down. For example, financial writers such as Ed Slott have taken what many people believe to be boring topics (tax law, annuities) and made them entertaining and even exciting.

2. Marketing engages.

Great marketing solves the age-old dilemma of how to keep the conversation going with a new prospect. Well-crafted drip campaigns, SMS campaigns, podcasts, videos, or webinars all help to keep your prospects and clients intrigued and informed.

A winning marketing plan boosts your online presence and helps you get found in search. It also enhances your reputation and trustworthiness. Effective marketing can also remove trust barriers and answer some of the questions prospective clients may have about you and your firm.

3. Marketing sets you up for easier sales.

Many advisors and agents see their closing ratios improve when they change their emphasis from selling to marketing. Interesting, helpful content goes a long way in preparing future clients for the kind of relationship you want them to have with you.

Profitable financial services practices need to make consistent, relevant marketing a priority. Advisors who want to attract more of the kinds of clients they want, and need should not be blasé in their branding and marketing campaigns. Instead of an afterthought, marketing initiatives that highlight your core values, processes, and protocols should form the cornerstone of your practice.

Trent Johnson is a co-founder of Park Avenue Advisors, a financial planning firm that's a branch office of DFPG Investments branch, with investment advisory services offered through TownSquare Capital. DFPG and TownSquare are not affiliated.life