Create a more effective marketing program

Coming up with effective marketing initiatives in today's challenging financial environment can be difficult.

Coming up with effective marketing initiatives in today’s challenging financial environment can be difficult. Although each advisory practice is unique, here are five marketing precepts that any financial adviser can use to help supercharge his or her marketing activities and achieve success in these trying times.

Position yourself. Proper positioning is the foundation of the marketing process. Positioning answers the question of where your practice fits in vis-à-vis other practices.

Are you planning-oriented? Investment-oriented? Do you specialize in a particular demographic or professional segment?

Your positioning can have some latitude, but remember that an adviser who serves everyone really serves no one.

Next, create a vision for your firm that leverages your strengths and taps into a marketplace need.

For example, your vision can be to become the premier tax-free-investment specialist in Southern California. Or it can be to serve as the pre-eminent adviser to physicians in the Atlanta suburbs.

Many advisers have found that specialization is the key to success, and the possibilities are almost endless.

After defining your vision, implement a strategy to reach your target market through seminars, direct mail (both electronic and traditional), articles in local papers or participation in local business events.

Experiment. Those concerned about the risks and uncertainties of new marketing approaches should remember that the difference between a rut and a grave is its depth. In marketing, the rewards of sensible experimentation far outweigh the risks.

Have a new idea? Test it.

An objective test of a mailing piece, for instance, will help you identify and improve what works and abandon what doesn’t. Try a variety of seminars or business events. Send out letters with different offers or set up a booth at a local fair. You might be surprised at the results. The greatest success often comes from the most unexpected places.

Look inward. Many advisers think that the primary mission of marketing is to attract clients. Wrong. Retaining clients is an equally important goal. Think about ways that you can use what you know about your clients to enhance their attachment and loyalty. Begin by gathering valuable data that will provide the insights needed to do effective client-centric marketing. For example, survey your best clients and find out the order in which they purchased various products and services. This will give you insight into the likely behavior of other clients and reveal their unmet needs and concerns.

Also survey your inactive ac-counts and find out why they aren’t doing business with you. Where are they doing business and why? Examine any negative comments you receive. These can tell you a lot about your clients’ priorities and concerns. All this information can lead to effective client-centric marketing.

Reach out to clients. Since to-day’s technology provides clients and prospects with instant, on-demand access to a wealth of information, financial services providers no longer determine what information clients should have. As a result, personalized, one-on-one marketing approaches, which needn’t cost much or be difficult to execute, can make a big difference in building client loyalty. A birthday card, for instance, shows thoughtfulness and caring. An occasional sincere note simply thanking clients for their business can have great meaning.

Embrace change. Are you making the same investment recommendations you made in 1999? Of course not, so why should you be marketing the same way you did a decade ago? Marketing success comes to those advisers who read the tea leaves and are able to anticipate and appropriately respond to marketplace realities and emerging trends.

Adviser marketing is becoming inclusive, interactive and responsive. As a result, traditional vehicles such as print advertising and promotion will continue to fall out of favor as online tools increasingly take their place.

Advisers who remain alert to these trends and effectively use the new tools will reap the benefits of being a leader.

Jay Nagdeman is president of Suasion Resources Inc. in Roseland, N.J. This column was excerpted from his new book, “The Professional’s Guide to Financial Services Marketing: Bite-Sized Insights for Creating Effective Approaches” (John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2009).

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