When Should We Outsource Marketing?

Dear E.Z.,

The thing to love and to dislike a lot about marketing is that there are so many facets to it, so many definitions of it and so many specialties within it. This seems to be the source of your question. You want to know which areas of focus your firm needs and how best to execute against these needs. It would be unfair of me to say the best practice for one firm is the same best practice for another. It depends on what the firm has in place, what they are trying to accomplish, how integral marketing is to the overall process and what talent they have already in-house. A few questions to get you started:

1. Do you have a brand that is clear and differentiated? If not, this is a good place to start. Knowing your story, knowing how it is different from the one your competitors are telling, and knowing that this story is understood and communicated throughout your firm is a very important first step. This task requires a marketing specialist who can develop the platform points and then ensure these are woven throughout the materials and the messaging

2. Are your materials effective for where you are today and what you are trying to accomplish? Is your website current and doing what you need it to? Do your team members have materials they can use? Is everything consistent or are advisors doing their own thing without oversight or collaboration? Having someone who can connect the content throughout the organization and create consistency in approach is key.

3. What methods do you want to use to raise your profile? Are you running webinars, writing commentary, or asking advisors to have a “point of view” on a topic and share that widely? Are you buying advertising, doing sponsorships or holding large events? All of these things take specific skills – event planning alone, for example, is a big job that requires focus and knowledge.

4. Do you want to have an active social presence via your firm’s LinkedIn page, via individual advisor LinkedIn profiles, on Facebook or Instagram or any other platform? I don’t know your target audience, but some of those media don’t work well for every audience (each advisor, however, should absolutely have an active LinkedIn presence). You might need someone to review individual social media profiles and make sure they are consistent with your brand and tell the right story to the right audience.

While all these areas require someone who has the talent and can specialize, all of them also lend themselves to outsourcing. You can hire most of this talent without having to bring it in-house full-time. What you probably need short-term is a talented senior marketing professional who knows how to create an overall strategy. They can work with your more junior person and outside talent as necessary to implement the strategy. As you see what works, what doesn’t and where the ongoing needs might be, you could consider adding to your team.

Dear Bev,

We have recently redone our website. It took us months to gain agreement on the right pages, the right colors and what pictures we wanted to use. The five partners were barely speaking to each other by the time we finished it. We used our internal marketing person who worked with an outside firm. The end result is nice. But I don’t think it is award-winning or market-leading.

I cannot suggest updating it again. I think the partners hope we don’t look at it again for 15 years (that’s how long the prior website had been up without an update). They all get so angry and particular about every single piece.

I tried to facilitate some discussions, and our vendor tried mightily to get agreement on a number of things. Eventually they threw up their hands and told us we could do whatever we wanted to do.

Is this the norm or are we unusual? I have heard horror stories from colleagues in other firms when trying to redo their website. It seems like it is such a hot topic and yet we’re in a fairly boring profession. It isn’t like we can razzle and dazzle people the way a technology or even retail firm might be able to. We’re staid and normal, why in the world fight over something that is not complicated and can’t be made complicated even if we wanted it to (compliance!)?

A.O.

Dear A.O.,

I create storylines, websites and marketing material for advisors. I wasn’t sure if you were looking for me to validate your experience from my related first-hand experiences, or whether you wanted me to simply answer the reason why it is so difficult. Yes, in most cases it is very difficult for partners and team members to come to agreement on what the site should be, what it should say and how it should look.

Why?

There are three main reasons, in my experience:

1. The firm doesn’t have a clear story or brand, and this comes to the forefront when someone starts to enhance a website. There is often disagreement on word choice, page tabs and how the firm wants to display themselves to the world because there isn’t alignment on how everyone talk about the firm and what makes them special. We’ve seen this time and time again where lack of a story and a consistent brand makes putting words and images in place almost impossible.

2. The website is a projection of who you are and how you want to be known in the marketplace. If I partner with someone and I like the idea of grandparents on the beach holding hands with their grandchildren to show what we do, but my partner doesn’t like people pictures and thinks we shouldn’t show grey-haired people at all, we are going to have a hard time coming to agreement on how to represent ourselves. People can spend hours debating which picture sums up who they are most effectively. I’ve seen sites where there isn’t a consistent theme – probably where a team has had a hard time developing “look and feel” that accurately supports who they are. The vendor will often push for consistency but it could get to a point where there is so much disagreement, like in your case, the vendor decides to just do what they are told and get it done.

3. Everyone – and I mean everyone – involved in a marketing project has an opinion and believes they have enough knowledge to voice that opinion. The color isn’t right for me – but my partner really likes that specific color. The font sizes are weird – but others use those font sizes effectively. The pictures aren’t colorful enough, or are too colorful. The website isn’t different enough from others out there. There needs to be pizzazz but it can’t look weird. Gaining agreement on how things should look and be portrayed is a process in and of itself.

This is why I often advocate for only a couple of people in a firm to be the final decision-makers with support to do so from the other team members. To use an old adage, if there are too many cooks in the kitchen, the meal will come out burned or inedible. Websites, like all marketing, need an underlying strategy with a clear brand and a clear implementation process.

If it makes you feel better, your firm is not unusual in the experience.

Beverly Flaxington co-founded The Collaborative, a consulting firm devoted to business building for the financial services industry, in 1995. The firm also founded and manages the Advisors Sales Academy. She is currently an adjunct professor at Suffolk University teaching undergraduate and graduate students Entrepreneurship and Leading Teams. Beverly is a Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst (CPBA) and Certified Professional Values Analyst (CPVA).

She has spent over 25 years in the investment industry and has been featured in Selling Power Magazine and quoted in hundreds of media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC.com, Investment News and Solutions Magazine for the FPA. She speaks frequently at investment industry conferences and is a speaker for the CFA Institute.

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