By Martin R. Baird, President, Advisor Marketing
Few people are natural-born marketers and the same goes for financial advisors. They have the best of intentions when it comes to promoting their practice, but they end up committing a number of marketing sins. One that is very common in the financial services industry is what I call the Peanut Butter and Jelly Sin.
Advisors don’t make the most of the great relationships they have. Peanut butter and jelly work well together. They compliment each other. But many advisors don’t place enough value on the relationships they have with their existing clients. The relationship with any of your clients is priceless. The only way you develop that relationship is by earning it through your actions.
My book, “The 7 Deadly Sins of Advisor Marketing,” helps advisors overcome this marketing sin and several others. Following is an excerpt from the book. Those interested may order a copy of the book at my Web site, www.Advisormarketing.com, on the More Resources page. The link for ordering information is next to the first book listed on that page.
Excerpt:
Grow Your Business By Staying in Touch With Your Clients
One of the best ways you can grow your business is by staying in touch with your clients and prospects. Following are a couple of marketing rules of thumb that show how important regular client contact can be.
Rule 1 – It takes eight impressions before a person remembers seeing it once.
I know you can understand that. Think about how many times you’ve seen a commercial or ad before you “remember” it.
Understanding this is important because you will need a high level of repetition for your clients and prospects to remember your marketing message. Telling a person once is not enough. They’re too busy to remember all the messages that bombard them every day.
So how do you create that many impressions? It’s simple!
You develop a system. For example, www.amazingmail.com is a wonderful and easy way to keep in contact with your clients and prospects. Amazingmail makes it easy to send people custom postcards. You can send a postcard to 50, 500 or 5,000 clients without ever going to the printer.
All you need to do is send Amazingmail the image for the front of the card, the message you want on the back and the addresses. The next day, they are all mailed out. Amazingmail had a special in which you could buy 100 and get 100 FREE. You can send out postcards with pictures of you and your clients or things that relate to your clients’ goals, and they’re ready to go with a couple of mouse clicks.
This is a GREAT marketing tool that every advisor should be using.
Rule 2 – It can be as much as 10 times more expensive to acquire new clients than it is to retain your current ones.
Many businesses have found that it’s cost prohibitive to attract new clients. If it’s so expensive to lure new ones, what do you do?
Again, the answer is simple. You stay in contact with your current clients and look for ways to provide them with more services. (When I say services, I want you to think of them as solutions.) The more solutions you provide, the more likely they are to keep using your services.
There was a study done with banks, and it showed that if a customer had only one account, there was a 50/50 chance they would leave the bank. That makes sense because the barrier to leaving the bank was very low. The higher the barrier, the less likely a person will be to switch. When the bank has a customer’s checking, savings, CDs and safe deposit box, the probability of that person changing banks is less than 1 in 100.
As competition grows in your industry, it’s going to be more important than ever that you develop a relationship that makes your clients never want to leave.
A great way to do this is to stay in contact with them. You could develop a system that allows you to send out custom birthday, anniversary and holiday postcards. Maybe you could even do cards for special events in your area.
The more “touches” you make, the more rewards you will reap!
