Rebranding Your Financial Firm: What Every Advisor Needs to Know

Effective marketing is the bridge that connects financial advisors to their potential clients. However, it all too often happens that financial advisors' marketing activities fall apart, resulting in limited reach and effectiveness, and ultimately frustration with marketing. In my experience as a marketer, I’ve seen advisors make just about every mistake in the book, from not understanding the importance of a website to high value missed opportunities to promote and build their brand. I get it - you’re an advisor, you’re good with money, you aren’t supposed to know marketing too. Below are the top five mistakes that I’ve seen financial advisors make in marketing along with insights into how you can avoid them. 1. Ignoring a Niche Focus You’ve heard it before, many financial advisors make the critical mistake of casting too wide a net. By trying to serve everybody, they end up having too vague of messaging for anybody to really relate to. A targeted approach lets advisors fine-tune their messaging and services to speak to the exact needs of their narrowly defined audience, ultimately creating a better pool of prospects. Solution: Identify and embrace a niche. A well-focused niche—be it helping millennial families with children under the age of five to plan for financial security for their growing family, or assisting retired educators with their financial planning—will make marketing efforts more relevant and effective so that you can specifically speak to your clients' pain points. This will help you improve not only your client acquisition but also your client retention, as you'll be able to offer your services in a better-customized way for a specific target audience. 2. Ignoring the Power of Digital Marketing A strong online presence is no longer an option in today's world - there, I said it! Yet, many financial advisors still put too much focus on seminars and print advertisements at the expense of the huge potential of outreach that digital platforms provide. Even if your target market isn’t digitally savvy, they will have children and grandchildren who are, and who will go online to ensure their elderly family members aren’t taken advantage of. Another important reason to have a strong online presence is SEO. Just like with investing, proper search engine optimization is a long-term game. Google likes to change the rules of SEO rather frequently and starting sooner than later will set you up for success. Solution: Invest in a comprehensive digital marketing strategy that includes a professional website, social media presence, and an email marketing campaign. If you can find a quality marketer (ahem!) they can make all of these components work together for lead generating and client retention. Make SEO efforts to increase the visibility of your company on the Internet and to reach more potential customers through natural traffic. 3. Ignoring the Importance of Personal Branding The importance of personal branding cannot be underestimated in a field so sensitive to trust as financial advising. Clients want to know who is behind the advice that is being given to them. Therefore, failure to develop a good personal brand is part of what has held many financial advisors from ever attracting and retaining clients. Another perspective on this is that this industry is saturated with advisors all preaching the same thing - financial planning, retirement savings ... .stand out in the crowd by making yourself more personable. Solution: Create a personal brand around what you value and know, showing how you'll be beneficial in unique ways. Share free content—blogs, vlogs, podcasts—that will provide value and create credibility with potential clients while connecting with them on a personal level. 4. Overlooking Customer Feedback Ignoring your clients’ feedback is a suicidal strategy. Feedback is the goldmine of various pieces of information with which financial advisors can finetune their services and marketing strategies. Sure, we’re all ultimately trying to obtain financial security but how you advise us to get there differs depending on where I am in my financial journey. Solution: Seek feedback constantly. You can do this informally through focus groups, surveys, or just casual conversation. Take what you have learned and integrate it to enhance your services and message. Show the clients that you appreciate their input and that you are always working to make your service better. Trust me, they will appreciate it! 5. Not Using Technology in Marketing Fully The final common mistake is underutilization of marketing technologies. Today, with CRM systems, analytics platforms, and automated marketing software, your effectiveness will be highly increased. You can also use these technologies to repurpose your marketing efforts. Solution: Adopt technology and embed modern tools within your marketing strategy; for example, CRM systems that help maintain better relationships with clients, and analytics platforms that help manage success through marketing strategies, thereby accordingly modifying them. Conclusion By avoiding these typical marketing mistakes, your reach and involvement with clients will be significantly enhanced. It, therefore, becomes a constant need for you as a financial advisor to refine your strategies and embrace those innovations which might come in the market to even better your connections with your audience. Approach your marketing with high-tension branding, strategic use of digital marketing, and ongoing feedback that builds a firm base for long-term client relationships and business growth.