Standing Out in a Crowded Market

2. Identify all important components of the strategy. Have a clearly articulated value proposition, create the profile for your ideal client and know where marketing fits into your plan. All these components take time and focus.

3. Create the value proposition or brand statements that work for your firm. I have talked for two decades about the importance of the “so what?” You say you are a fiduciary – well (with all due respect), “so what?” What does a fiduciary mean to your audience? We in the profession know and understand it. But to investors, how do you explain the value of this and why it matters – and most importantly how you are different from all the other RIAs who are also fiduciaries? I work with several of the larger non-RIA firms and the teams there take fiduciary responsibility very seriously too. Think about what it feels like, or how people think about working with you. What do clients experience? What words or descriptors connect to who your team is and what your firm is all about? Value prop should be more about an experience and a differentiator than the same-old, same-old.

4. What stories do you have to tell? I do an exercise in my learning sessions whereby I ask someone to tell a story about something they did for clients in two minutes or less. I ask their colleagues to listen to the story. After the person finishes telling the story, I ask colleagues to share adjectives that come to mind from listening. They are most often very powerful terms and much more evocative than anything you might glean from reading marketing materials. Capture stories, share them and tell them often. They have much more impact than traditional marketing materials.

5. Do what you enjoy and can commit to on a consistent basis. Don’t start a podcast, record five sessions and then stop. Don’t update your website and only do surface changes. Don’t write emails that are informative but then only follow through a few times before you miss weeks of doing so. Starting a marketing activity and then stopping it – or doing a piece but not following through – is often much worse than doing nothing at all. Your prospects and clients will come to expect something from you; if you don’t send it or stop doing it they might wonder what’s wrong. Pick something you can commit to time wise, and you enjoy doing and will follow through on. More “stuff” is just more stuff if you aren’t doing it consistently and in a coordinated fashion.

6. Coordinate marketing activities with your team. It surprises me the number of times I hear someone, even in a smaller firm, say there has been a letter sent to clients they didn’t know about or an event planned they were not made aware of before it was too late to invite people. Marketing should never be done in a vacuum. It is the support system for your sales and servicing side of the business. Great marketing isn’t great if it doesn’t support the people who are working with clients every day and trying to find new revenue!

7. Create a plan, track it and use accountability standards. I get asked very often how to measure marketing activities. On a discrete basis, it is almost impossible. Even if you find your “campaign” generated X number of new leads, you will never know whether those leads were made possible because of some other promotion, name recognition, advice from an existing client and so on. It is a truly integrated plan that works best. So, create an overall plan. Be clear what you are hoping to accomplish – the metrics can be quantitative in terms of new leads or closed opportunities, or qualitative in terms of increased brand recognition or more prospects saying they “have heard about your firm.” Once you know what you are aiming for, identify the three to five tactics you want to employ, can commit to and have the time and resources to execute. Write a plan – what to do each quarter, month, week and so on. Who will do it? How much will it cost? If outsourcing, who will be the primary contact in your firm? How will you ensure you stay on track? Marketing activities can never be “one and done.” They are ongoing, and results depend on a plan and focus.

8. Spend the necessary money. There is no rule of thumb. I see some firms that have tiny budgets and do almost no marketing outside of sending out a packaged newsletter each week, and others who devote 10-25% of their revenue and a good portion of their budget to marketing. It’s all about what you want to accomplish, can afford, are expecting to reap for results and will follow through on.

Marketing is a critical component of any business. It raises brand awareness, informs people about who you are and what you do, attracts new prospects who might need your services and gives your team a consistent storyline to use. But it can’t be a throw-away activity. It requires focus, attention and most importantly time.

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. The firm has won the Wealthbriefing WealthTech award for Best Training Solution for 2022 and 2023. Beverly is currently an adjunct professor at Suffolk University teaching undergraduate and graduate students Entrepreneurship and Leading Teams. She 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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