There are four parts to an effective marketing strategy, Tim Welsh, president and founder of Nexus Strategy, said during a marketing panel at the 2013 National Association of Active Investment Managers Annual Conference.
First, advisors have to define their target client. Welsh suggested the simplest way to do that was to study the demographics of their most valuable clients.
Then advisors need to outline their messaging platform. To do so, they should define the services they are providing their clients and the benefits, how they will deliver those services, and what gives them credibility among clients and prospects.
With that information, advisors can begin building a campaign strategy, Welsh said, that shares that information with their target clients across all communication platforms.
The last step, of course, is to execute the plan.
Jason Wenk, founder and president of Retirement Wealth Advisors, then stepped up to describe how he used blogging to generate business for his firm.
Much of the traffic to his site comes from four blog posts he wrote over a year ago, he said. The key is writing targeted headlines to match what users are searching for.
Blogging fails when it is inconsistent, irrelevant, unengaging and doesn’t include a call to action for readers to follow up on, he said. Relevant content is the “missing link” to free traffic to advisors’ websites, he said.
Wenk posed four questions for advisors to answer to optimize their websites for the most traffic.
- What do ideal clients want?
- What are they searching for online to find your site?
- What are your competitors doing that you can do better?
- Are you an expert clients and prospects can trust?
To answer those questions, advisors can use Web analysis tools like Google Analytics. However, Mark Piquette, chief marketing officer for Trust Co. of America, said many advisors don’t use analytics tools because they don’t have the help or the resources they need.