Firms seeking organic growth must understand that marketing is not sales. Instead, it's a long-term investment that should be tracked by advisors, said Crystal Mathis, chief marketing officer at SignatureFD.
“You have to know you're in it for the long haul,” she said. “A lot of people fall into the trap of 'I'm going to make this an event and blow it out of the water and have customers coming out the wazoo.' It doesn't work that way.”
Mathis, along with Terra McBride, chief marketing officer at Prime Capital Investment Advisors, Michelle Panzera, director of marketing at Evensky & Katz/Foldes, and Angela Giombetti, chief marketing officer at Wealthspire Advisors, discussed how marketing drives organic growth for advisory firms at WealthStack , part of Wealth Management EDGE, held last week at The Diplomat Beach Resort in Hollywood Beach, Fla.
McBride said Prime Capital Investment Advisors allows its advisers to experiment with marketing strategies. Then they track how well each one does. The firm will typically support 25% of the cost of an initiative, so both they and the advisor will have skin in the game.
“We know that different strategies will work for different advisors. We have a number of strategies to choose from,” she said. “Data is not important. This is just a bunch of facts in a bucket. We need to connect their data so you have more information and can start to step up to make informed decisions.”
Giombetti said marketing itself has evolved over the past five to 10 years. While in the beginning, it was all about branding and brand awareness, the rise of digital campaigns has pushed marketing and business development together.
“There's such a blurred line now about what we're responsible for,” she said.
McBride said one way to motivate advisors to generate more organic growth was to use their inherent competitiveness.
“We make sure they can see where they are with each other when they log into their dashboard. And they're like, 'Man, I went down to number three from number two,'” she said. “Allowing them the space to do that was very helpful.”
Panzera said they encourage advisors to play to their strengths and do more of what they're good at to get results.
“If you're committed to what works, it's easier to adopt and experiment,” she said.
Even with all these different methods, there has to be an overarching goal that drives everything, Panzera said.
“There should be a pyramid with a goal at the top,” she said. “LinkedIn is a distribution channel, not a strategy. You want a strategy with a broad, high-level view.”
Giombetti said follow-up actions that continue the conversation are critical to any successful tactic, regardless of their choice.
“No effort is one and done. If you're going to spend time doing an event, what's the follow-up? What is a spot campaign?” she said.
That way, Mathis said, advisers on the back end can scale up initial efforts without additional upfront costs.
“It allows you to create a piece for a lot of money and keep recycling it over and over again,” she said. “You can make it SEO friendly, too.”