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Your “Genius” Financial Advisor Marketing Plan, Part II

By Ray Sclafani | March 5, 2013


Last week, we set the stage for creating your own “genius” financial advisor marketing plan in 4 easy steps, which are: 1) Assessment, 2) Goals, 3) Activities, and 4) Self Coaching.

We focused on the first piece, i.e. an assessment of what your current reality is from a marketing perspective. Today, let’s talk about the goals piece. (By the way, if you are interested in using these blog posts to help you create a marketing plan for yourself or your team, you should probably follow them in sequence.)

Setting Your Marketing Goals

In identifying your marketing goals and objectives, here are some strategies that might help you frame what you’d like to accomplish:

 

  • Start Here If you don't know where to begin identifying a specific marketing goal, it might help to start with this question, “What’s the ‘one thing,’ from a marketing perspective, that would have the greatest long-term impact on your business?”
  • Find the “One Thing”. Now, if you have difficulty in identifying the “one thing” that would transform your practice, use this marketing checklist to drill down and find where you’d like to focus. One approach would be to ascertain a glaringly weak area of your practice, and work to improve it significantly. Alternatively, you might want to highlight an area where you really excel, and work from a position of strength.
  • Think 90-days time frame. From our observation, financial advisors who identify marketing goals that can be completed within 90 days, are among the most successful. There’s something about the 90-day time period. It’s long enough to have an impact, yet short enough to command your focused attention. (This isn’t to say that the full effect of your marketing campaign will be felt within 90 days, but that your marketing activities will be completed within this time frame.)
  • Specific vs. Vague. Use the SMART goal criteria as the entry point to setting marketing goals. For example, “My goal is to identify three Loyal Client Advocates over the next 90 days” is much more precise than “My goal is to increase referrals.” SMART goals are a proven and practical success model that is easy to grasp and use when measuring success.
  • Courageous Goals vs. SMART goals. Want to dial up your goal setting? Do you find SMART goals somewhat, um...boring? Try setting a courageous marketing goal that inspires excitement, inspiration and maybe even a little bit of fear. Some examples of goals for courageous financial advisors might be: Becoming the recognized and renowned, “go-to” financial advisor within your ideal client market, or creating a 100 percent referral-based practice that grows at 25+ percent annually, or raising $100 million in net new assets in one year. I don’t know what these courageous goals might be for you. My one suggestion would be to find something that inspires this reaction, “Wow! If we did this then my whole world and our whole team will be changed in a way that I cannot fully imagine right now.”

 

Concluding Thoughts

For successful financial advisors, who have the ability to guide and influence the lives of many clients, families, and generations, we would ask the following questions as you commit to your marketing goals:

  • What marketing goals would you like to set for yourself that would vividly cause you to feel great when you achieve them?
  • What marketing goals will require you to move outside of your comfort zone?
  • What goals and contributions can you make that will allow others (i.e. clients, peers, family and friends) to think differently about themselves?

 

We trust this helps.

 

For additional insights and marketing strategies used by top-performing financial advisors, please download this complimentary ClientWise Learning Tool:

 

Marketing Strategies

Topics: Marketing & Communication

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