Financial Advisor Marketing Plan: Five Tips to Steal from the Pros

Are you looking to create a financial advisor marketing plan for your financial services but unsure where to start? 

You’ve come to the right place then. Let’s get started.

As a financial advisor, you are aware of the many regulations that dictate what you can and cannot say in public. However, that does not mean marketing is impossible for financial advisors. With many financial advisory services failing to focus on digital channels and direct mail marketing, you have a unique opportunity to leap ahead of your competition and generate more leads.

Postalytics can help you execute an effective financial advisor marketing plan that takes a multi-channel approach. Our automated direct mail solution integrates with your CRM and sends marketing materials based on personalized triggers that will help you connect with your clients.

You don’t need an old-school marketing team because our free direct mail designer and mailing templates can help you easily create, design, print, and send mailings to your clients or financial services leads.

To discover how automated direct mail can increase the success of your financial advisor’s marketing plan, check out the Postalytics demo.

Now, let’s get into creating a highly effective plan with the tips from the pros.

Why is marketing important for financial advisors?

Financial advisors are under pressure to prove their value as technology and regulations keep on changing the business landscape. It has never been more important for advisors to demonstrate how they can benefit their clients.

Advisors who want to build strong relationships with their clients need to focus on building trust. Communicating well through marketing is key to effectively fostering this relationship. This can be done by offering educational opportunities to their clients and tailoring their advice and products to the client’s goals.

When it comes to growing your advisory business, getting yourself out there in front of the right people in order to grow your customer base is critical. 

The more exposure you can get, the better your chances. The longer you can stay top of mind, the more leads you’ll get.

How do financial advisors attract clients?

Although financial advisors are well-versed in their field and offer a variety of methods to help individuals achieve their investments and financial goals, they tend to remain unknown unless they make an effort to reach out and connect with individuals.

One of the best ways for advisors to do this is through prospecting as part of a financial advisor marketing campaign. This involves reaching out to individuals who need your services without coming off as salesy or pushy.

These are 3 strategies professional financial advisors use to attract new clients:

1. Publishing content and case studies: A blog post is a great way to connect with clients and prospects. It gives them a reason to revisit your website, improves your site’s search engine optimization (SEO), and can be used to drive email signups and, finally, lead prospects into becoming paying clients. Think of content as the top of the funnel or a touchpoint needed for a prospect to make up his mind about your business.
2. Build a LinkedIn network: LinkedIn is the perfect social media platform to help you connect with current clients, old contacts, improve your reputation, expand your network, and generate leads from potential clients. This can be tied in with content marketing that promotes your expertise in the thought leadership space (blog posts) and social media campaigns.
3. Ask for referrals: Many of the most successful financial advisors ask satisfied clients for referrals on a quarterly basis – whether by email,  by mail, or in person. Word of mouth is one of the strongest lead generation channels out there.

How much do financial advisors spend on marketing?

According to a leading annual survey of financial advisors, the average annual marketing spend by advisors in 2020 was $12,939, although this figure varied widely depending on the business size and experience of the financial professional.

Bigger is not always better. 

The smartest marketers know that the key to a successful marketing plan for a financial advisor is to take a small-scale, manageable approach. That’s why we recommend marketers spend more money on fewer channels – like a tandem of email and direct mail marketing. These techniques can help smaller firms stand out in their market and compete with much bigger competitors.

How can I market myself as a financial advisor?

Marketing your services and expertise to potential clients is a great way to get them interested in what you have to offer. It can be difficult to know how to create a financial advisor marketing campaign. However, with the right marketing strategy, you can reach and convert prospects, even if you don’t have much experience. You can turn leads into clients by learning more about marketing for financial advisors.

In this article, we’ll look at some of the best financial advisor marketing campaign ideas developed by the pros.

Tip One: Consider Your Audience

Financial advisors can help with a variety of financial planning needs. From saving for a first home to retirement planning, anyone facing a major financial event can benefit from working with them. As a financial advisor, you need to tailor your marketing efforts to your target audience. You can’t be all things to all people. Prospective clients are looking for experts who can solve their problems. That’s why it’s important to identify your niche services in your business model and target those who need them.

Most financial advisors focus on older clients with a lot of liquid assets. But younger generations made up of less affluent clients often have a need for financial advice as well, even if they don’t have as much to invest right now.

For example, Millennial and Gen Z investors are also less likely to have an advisor or a financial planner already, so the audience should be a factor in your business strategy when considering to whom you can offer financial plans and products.

It’s important to know where and how to connect with people who match your target demographics. There are many potential contacts in unexpected places in your community, such as clubs, local networking events, professional associations, or through referrals from other consultants in the financial industry.

As our communication channels continue to evolve and expand, there are also more and more opportunities for financial firms to engage their audiences digitally and offline, deploying a multi-channel marketing strategy. 

Remember, you want your message to be relevant to them and resonate with their financial goals.

Tip Two: Consider setting aside 10% of your revenue for marketing

A general rule of thumb for small to medium-size advisors is to set aside 5% to 10% of their revenue for marketing. This will ensure that you have enough funds for marketing activities and will see results over time.

Marketing is a lot of work, and you need to make sure you have the resources to follow through with your leads. However, marketing is the bloodline that can’t be overlooked or overstated if you want to run a healthy business.

This means that you need to have enough money, time, and staff to successfully execute your campaigns. Since Postalytics helps you create, print, and schedule direct mail marketing campaigns, you save both time and money on the resources you need for all your marketing activities.

Tip Three: Automated Direct Mail Marketing

Financial advisors have a number of marketing options available to them, with direct mail being one that can create the deepest connection with clients. 

The appeal of direct mail is that it can serve as a conversation starter at the dinner table – according to a U.S. survey, 88% of financial purchase decisions are made at home. This makes direct mail an effective way to generate leads by starting a conversation about finance with people who might be interested in your services.

Our software makes it easy to create and automate engaging and effective mailings so you can nurture relationships and reach households with your message.

You can simply integrate your mailing list into your Postalytics account and define mailing triggers (for example, send a postcard on clients’ birthdays or make sure not to miss an upcoming holiday). The platform will then automatically print and send out personalized mailers to your prospects.

Tip Four: Email and Direct Mail Combination

Direct mail can be an effective marketing tool when used in combination with a digital marketing strategy. One study found that marketers who integrated both digital and direct mail received 40% more responses than those who used digital-only campaigns. In addition, direct mail messages prompted recipients to take digital action 92% of the time.

With Postalytics tools, you can easily include QR codes, online promo offers, and unique URL addresses that send consumers online for more information or to direct them to your new website. Postalytics also gives you the ability to track the engagement and conversions of your direct mail, so marketers can improve future campaigns using past data.

Direct mail works like a charm when paired with email. Check out how this healthcare provider successfully engages with email non-responders with an email-direct mail combination.

Tip Five: Integrations

Postalytics has created an easy way for its users to integrate with existing marketing and CRM tools many financial advisors use. For example, you can easily send personalized postcards and letters directly from your Salesforce account. No need to waste time on manual tasks – just create your campaign in Salesforce, and our tool will take care of the rest. 

Plus, thanks to our CRM integrations, our tracking feature lets you see who has responded to your marketing emails, so you can follow up with the hottest or not-so-hot leads.

Creative marketing ideas for financial advisors

As a financial advisor, you are probably always looking for ideas for effective financial services marketing campaigns. 

Here are additional ideas for an effective financial advisor marketing campaign:

1. Send newsletters to your target market: This is a great addition to a financial advisor marketing plan. Launching a newsletter helps keep your business and financial services top-of-mind for your existing clients. You can provide them with value and advice in a variety of ways each month, such as highlighting new developments in your business or addressing frequently asked questions.
2. Send out postcards: Sending cards is a great way to show financial professionals’ customers that you care about them without having to spend a lot of money. Try using special holidays to create a relevant hook, such as American Saves Week or National Teachers Day if they are in the education sector. You can also just stick to holiday cards. Either way, Postalytics can help you create an affordable financial advisor’s marketing plan by providing quick and easy creative postcard templates that you can use to market yourself without all the hassle.

Best marketing tools for financial advisors

The most important aspect of effective software for financial advisors is tracking customer interactions (CRM). By integrating Postalytics with Zoho, we’ve made sure marketers can take advantage of targeted Triggered Drip Campaigns and list-based Smart Send Campaigns. This integration makes it easy to connect your Zoho automation with Postalytics so you can send highly targeted campaigns that engage your subscribers and customers.

Postalytics integrates with many of the best marketing tools for financial advisors. If you’re looking for a way to streamline your marketing and CRM tools, Postalytics is the perfect solution.

Our easy-to-use API integrations make it simple to connect with over 3,000 applications or create custom campaigns with our webhook URL. Plus, our direct mail API is the most comprehensive and user-friendly on the market for CRM-triggered marketing to push the needle forward.

Final Thoughts: Financial Advisor Marketing Plan

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer when it comes to how you should run marketing campaigns for financial advisors. 

However, Postalytics offers a platform that can be adapted to meet your firm’s specific needs for your marketing efforts. With our tools, you can quickly and easily create personalized direct mail campaigns, leveraging customer data to retarget cold leads and improve your overall marketing results.

Even if you don’t have an in-house marketing team, Postalytics automated marketing can help financial professionals build awareness and run successful financial advisor marketing campaigns that save time and money.

Simply said, avoid falling behind the competition,  generate more leads and stay top of mind with your clients at all times.