Suzanne Muusers

Do Financial Advisors Measure Their Marketing?

"Throw something against the wall and see if it sticks!" I said to a startled financial advisor prospect.  "That's how you are measuring your marketing right now" I continued.  A prospect had found me on the internet and called to find out what he should be doing more of and what he should let go of.  The only problem was that he was just guessing with regards to what marketing activities were working for him.

Part of managing your financial advisory practice like a business is to measure what you are doing. It's called "Marketing Return on Investment" and it's a calculation. You need to calculate what you are putting into your marketing: the time, the effort, and the cost.  You also need to calculate what you are getting back from your marketing: revenue, benefits other than revenue, and future potential.

Managing a financial advisory practice like a business is part art and part science. The art is managing your clients and giving them something tangible other than above average returns on their investment.  The science is being a professional entrepreneur and measuring how your marketing works.

This assumes you already have a great, innovative marketing plan. If you don't, you need to spend a good two months brainstorming on how to stand out from the competition and before you begin writing your marketing plan.

One simple way to measure your marketing is to implement a process that forces you to analyze your business on a yearly basis. Here are the steps:

1. Begin asking where your clients found out about you.
2. Create an excel spreadsheet.
3. On the  horizontal axis list marketing tactic, cost to implement, revenue received from the tactic,  return on investment (revenue divided by cost – expressed as a percentage), what you get out of the tactic other than revenue, what you dislike about the tactic, and the future potential of the tactic.
4. On the vertical axis, list all your marketing activities. You should have a decent mix of marketing tactics such as email newsletter (people no longer want mailed versions), every networking group you belong to, public speaking tactics such as seminars and workshops, volunteer work, referrals, advertising, and the like.
5. Analyze the statistics. What is truly working and what is a dud? Are you surprised at any of the results? What one tactic could you double to double your revenue?

Follow these steps and you will be managing your business more like an entrepreneur rather than a cookie cutter financial advisor. The advisors who build big books are those that are organized and productive with their marketing. Make sure that's you.

Copyright© 2009 |Suzanne Muusers

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