Build Your Brand with Powerful Marketing

So the first step is to build your strategic marketing plan. Now, just like your overall business plan, your strategic marketing plan, it's a roadmap for your team to follow and to implement. This plan keeps your team on target, and it really should be in line with the overall mission of your business. It is not just a game plan of what you want to accomplish, but also, it projects your hopes for the future. The very first element of your marketing plan should be creating your marketing mission and vision statements. Consider what you want to achieve over the next year, two years, even five years. Write it down. An example could be increasing awareness of our practice with ultra high-net-worth clients and increase assets under management 15%. The next step is to set realistic goals. And the key to this is to set a measurable goal along with a realistic timeline. For example, increase your brand awareness with physicians by 15% in the next 12 months. Once you've thought about these goals, you should identify exactly what is your competitive advantage. You know, it's the thing or things that set you apart from other advisors or teams. One way to do this is to look at an advisor or team that you think is doing a great job growing their book using effective marketing. Take note of everything they do and then determine what you do that's different. For example, that team and you, you're both doing great with retirement, trust, and estate clients, but their growth, it's off the charts compared to yours. What can you learn from them? Your competitive advantage can help you with the next step, which is to identify your target markets. If your competitive advantage is, let's say, just trust in states, then you may want to focus on marketing to attorneys and accountants. It's so important to brainstorm this and figure out the best way to penetrate these markets.

Another thought is to look for the trends in your book, look at gender, age, professions, whether they are retail or institutional. Do you like the trends that you're seeing in there? Or is there an area or two that you would like to grow? Maybe there's some areas you wanna get rid of. Often the best way to gain new clients is to ask existing clients for referrals, or actually we like to call them introductions. Many advisors, they really just don't enjoy asking for these introductions. Our Compelling Conversations and Building Your Referral Pipeline tools can be quite helpful with this. Now, other pieces of your marketing plan should include your communication plan. It's a plan for when, why and how you are communicating with your different level of clients. Also, and this is really important, resources. What and who are the resources you're going to apply towards your marketing plan? Who on your team is in charge of your marketing? You must assign this to someone or it will get lost in the noise of the day-to-day business. Here's another important thing to consider when it comes to your marketing plan and that is budget. You should determine the budget you're willing to spend on your marketing and stick to it. For example, some advisors take a percentage of their revenues and they create their marketing budget that way. Oh and take advantage of any marketing resources that your firm may provide. I would bet my life there are many that you are simply unaware of. And the last thing that you should do to build your plan is to create a monthly tactics timeline. This can include initiatives like public relations, advertising, drip campaigns, client events, social media, and so, so much more.

The second step is to try to stand out from the crowd. You do this by building your brand's story. Where do you begin? You go to the source, interviewing your current clients to gain their perspective about what makes you and your team different. Using our client impression survey, the one in the branding and marketing tool, can give you insight into what your clients value about working with you and your team. Number one, that you understand their challenges and have worked with people like them. Number two, how you will help them manage their wealth. And number three, what are the services that you and your team provide beyond your investment management capabilities? When you begin to develop your story, focus on the breadth and depth of your team. Our research has shown that you should build your bio using three short paragraphs that highlight the benefits that you employ to help your clients. And effective bio has three in paragraphs. The first focus is on your role in working with clients, remember to make this very benefit oriented. The second paragraph, it really focuses on your credibility and it should include obviously things like your relevant experience, education, awards, and industry designations. The final paragraph helps you build connections with clients and prospects, and really should include some personal information. When you show the team in its entirety, it's really important to show all the resources that you're bringing towards the client. So this could include strategic partners, team resources, firm resources and even other strategic alliances outside of the firm. When it comes to describing your investment process, it's a good idea to place emphasis on the discovery step. That's where everything is personalized. And of course the ongoing management phase, helping your clients navigate the risks and rewards of the market. Finally make that process your own, make it proprietary to you and your team. Once you've completed your initial marketing piece and built out this brand story, it's time to take this document and translate it to a digital platform and your website. You are creating a consistent message and a consistent brand experience across all your client touch points. And that's the goal.

You know, great teams know that building a strong brand means extending it through every touchpoint you have with prospects and clients. It can go way beyond traditional media, like advertising, and it can include everything from your elevator pitch to your website to your office environment. Yes, your office environment. To the way you compose and deliver your emails and/or other communications. And when it comes to delivering an exceptional client experience, the goal is to ensure your clients experience the very specific service that you intended for them and that they receive consistent messages about your team at every step. One way to do this is through your office environment. Consider what reading materials you have in your waiting area. What photos do you have in your office? And what background are you using for your Zoom or WebEx meetings? It's important to note here that great advisors and teams out there create an exceptional and powerful client service protocol and journey for each level of client that they serve. Now, when it comes to your traditional media, like brochures, newsletters and advertising, a few ideas that successful advisors include in their marketing plan are: incorporating public relations, like ghost-written articles, guest columns or blogs, TV interviews, of course, obviously, be sure to get appropriate clearance from your firm's compliance department. Oh, and send press releases to the local media when someone joins your team and send that same press release to your clients and prospects. It's impressive and it gets their attention. Keep professional team and individual photos on hand and use them in your emails, your newsletters and blogs so it gently reminds clients and prospects of your team structure and it's at every touch point.

Now, for client communications, consider this. Creating a regular schedule to conduct conference calls or educational seminars that provide insight into timely trends, about the firm's opinion on the markets, discussions with firm leadership and more. Don't forget the importance of client events. Bringing your clients together from time to time, it can be quite valuable. Oh, and here's something that many advisors do. Have your clients bring a friend with them that you do not know. Are you the first person to be in touch with your clients during times of market volatility? If not, I can promise you your competitors would love to step in and guide your clients through those challenging times. Now, for social media, consider these things. Creating communications with clients regularly through Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter, and, of course, with firm approval, creating a blog and contributing to it regularly, or hosting a podcast on a regular basis as well. Now, ultimately, there is no end to the number of ways that you can find to make your brand a living, breathing extension of you and your firm. How do you do this? By integrating powerful marketing. Now, in the branding and marketing toolkit, you're gonna find many more details, but we also recommend coming up with as many ideas as possible through team brainstorming. It's really fun and it's such a worthwhile process. And remember, those FAs or teams who incorporate some sort of marketing into their practice, well, they experience a great deal of success. It takes planning, effort, and resources, but you will be rewarded in spades.

- Thank you for your time. I hope you found it informative. If you have any questions or for more information on this or other programs from Invesco Global Consulting, please reach out to your senior advisor consultant. Thank you.