Sponsored by FMG Suite
When advisors successfully pair traditional relationship marketing efforts with new avenues of digital communication, it results in better prospects, loyal clients, and increased AUM.
Consider the following statistics regarding the digitally savvy advisor:
- They beat the industry average for AUM growth by 42%.
- 87% use technology for a holistic view of clients' lives, interests, and preferences.
- 53% use automated emails and text messages.
- 77% provide visual reports to simplify the client-experience.
As a broker-dealer, providing a marketing solution that helps advisors become successful marketers can mean higher advisor retention rates, revenue growth for both the advisor and broker-dealer, as well as offering an attractive option when recruiting top advisors. We have compiled a list of primary concerns facing those responsible for choosing and implementing a marketing solution:
1. Piecemeal solutions are difficult to install and maintain
When looking at the needs of advisors in their digital presence management, several pieces of software offer partial solutions. When it comes to company-wide adoption of a digital marketing tool or suite, broker-dealers must take into account the installation cost for each separate piece of technology.
An all-in-one marketing stack with integrations between website, social, email, and events is a more seamless solution. Many of the headaches and confusion advisors would have experienced with a piecemeal solution won't be a problem.
2. Advisors need education, training, and support
A marketing solution should provide robust education and training for advisors. By providing ongoing training through webinars, broadcasts, whitepapers, e-books, and articles, your marketing solution will help advisors to learn and grow at their own pace.
Advisors need to be able to reach a live service representative any time they have a question about their technology. Top-notch customer service can be the difference between whether an advisor adopts marketing technology or not.
3. Content creation is timely and costly
Without a plan to provide your advisors with consistent and fresh compliance-approved content, their marketing efforts stall out. Most broker-dealer marketing teams don’t have the resources and bandwidth to create a consistent stream of content for advisors.
You need a solution that offers a comprehensive content library covering all of the subjects advisors need to use to define their niche in the marketplace. The distribution of content to an advisor’s audience should be easy and automatic.
4. Ensuring compliance on the back end
You need to find a marketing vendor that takes compliance very seriously. This is a heavily regulated industry and your marketing solution provider needs to be familiar with your record-keeping needs along with journaling and archiving of electronic communications.
You need content that comes pre-reviewed by FINRA, compliance-friendly, and non-promissory. The streamlining of the content approval process removes a significant barrier in the content creation and publication effort.
5. The system will need constant upkeep to keep up with marketing and regulatory changes
Initial costs of adopting a marketing technology are essential to consider. Equally, if not more important is the cost of continuing to use the product for years or even decades to come.
Once a marketing technology is up and running, it still requires maintenance, execution, and recalibration. Plus, the marketing landscape continues to change at a rapid pace and your technology needs to evolve with it. You will need a responsive partner that monitors social platforms and regulatory necessities, in order to take action accordingly.
6. Customization will be expensive
There is no one-size-fits-all solution for every company. Out-of-the-box marketing systems can work for an individual, but when it comes to something as complex as providing software for company-wide adoption, there is often, if not always, the need for customization.
Many marketing systems don't offer any possibility of customization while others make the price so high to deter clients from seeking out this option. Without a customized marketing system, an enterprise might find that several vital features or specifications they need to use the solution properly will not be available.
7. The features are not clearly explained
For a marketing suite to make sense as a company-wide solution, there needs to be a clear understanding of the features and benefits offered by said solution. Many marketing companies may not have the industry knowledge or understand financial advisors’ needs and end up building features financial advisors or broker-dealers don't need.
By not communicating their features, these companies hope to pass off underdeveloped product features as essential wants.
Pulling the Trigger
At FMG Suite, we’re eager to share any insights we’ve uncovered after working with many different broker-dealers, big and small. We’re passionate about making advisors extraordinary marketers.
What concerns do you have about adopting a company-wide marketing solution?
Download the white paper, "Determining the Best Marketing Solution for Advisors".
