When Marketing to Clients, More Isn’t Necessarily Better

My phone rings a lot lately, often with advisers asking how to do more. That’s particularly true in 2021, when many advisers have been forced to curtail their marketing and outreach efforts due to COVID-19. These advisers want to grow and are willing to work on their practices to better position them for success. They have plenty of great ideas, including starting social media campaigns or blogs, developing radio shows or podcasts and revamping their marketing to include paid search.

I’m a huge fan of client-facing activity because I know it’s the best way for advisers to gain referrals and bring in new clients. So why, when I’m asked to provide feedback on their marketing calendars, do I often start by urging advisers to stop what they’re doing?

Because more isn’t necessarily better. Advisers shouldn’t spend time and money to do more marketing if they don’t know what has worked in the past. Some advisers like to try new ideas they’ve heard without determining whether they’re a fit for their practices. Others squander built-in opportunities they already have.

Case in Point

A firm I work with hosted a series of very successful quarterly webinars last year. In some cases, more than 50 participants attended, many of whom were prospects. That’s a wonderful position to be in. The firm was planning to shift to monthly webinars, reasoning that if four per year was good, 12 per year would be terrific. It didn’t have a process to handle the leads that had already come in, however. No one was assigned to follow up, and it didn’t have a game plan for converting leads into clients, other than to add prospects to its newsletter list. The firm knew that planning and coordinating webinars took a great deal of time but hadn’t considered how strapped it would be if their frequency increased. So, we drastically pared down the firm’s marketing calendar, resulting in greater impact.

Assess Your Successes

If you want to succeed in 2021, before you start doing more, stop and assess where you’re already being effective. If you haven’t taken the time to do this, I assure you it will be eye-opening. Consider the following:

• Does your firm send a lot of emails? If so, you should know what your open rates (percentage of people who opened your email) and click-through rates (percentage of people who clicked a link in your email) are for individual campaigns. Which messages or campaigns had the highest ratings? Did your open rates increase, and is there anything you can do to bump them higher? And, if you aren’t sending your emails via a service (e.g., Constant Contact or Mailchimp) that will give you data and analytics, you should stop sending emails until you do so. You need to know if people are bothering to open your emails before you plan the next campaign.
• Have you tried to make your email content compelling enough that people actually want to open your emails to read it? Advisers often send fabulous content with a headline all but designed to make people’s eyes glaze over—this week’s economic update or important tax information. There’s little chance that type of email will be opened. It’s a top priority to make the subject line something that will entice recipients to open the email, so be creative!
• Do you blog, write articles or create proprietary newsletters? If so, you have unique content that can be used across many digital formats, from your website to your LinkedIn profile to your Facebook or Instagram pages. Create a plan that allows you to maximize distribution of original content so both clients and prospects can view it. Then, look at your hit rates and results to see which content had the most impact. So you don’t miss an opportunity, consider a service, such as Snappy Kraken, that can automate the process for you.
• Getting social outside the office is important. Yes, the pandemic has made in-person client events and lunches difficult, but it’s still possible to have a personal touch. One adviser started hosting trivia nights for his clients. People stuck in their homes are looking for things to do, and the response to game night far exceeded the adviser’s expectations. Not only does the adviser get to laugh and talk with his clients, but because they pick their own teams, the adviser has met many new prospects in the warmest of settings.

So, before you undertake an ambitious plan for 2021, be sure to spend time discussing what has worked—and what hasn’t—for your firm. Use any data or analytics available to you, make changes to improve what you’re already doing and maximize the impact from your current activities before adding more to your marketing calendar. You can thank me later!