When you provide financial advisory services to business owners, marketing yourself can feel like a real challenge.
With so many competitors out there, you might wonder what sets you apart. And with so much content online today, you might question if anyone is finding your website or reading your emails.
However, there are always new ways to market yourself as a financial advisor, whether you’re struggling to get new clients or you’re looking to reach that next milestone of growth.
In this article, we offer 7 unique marketing ideas you can use to level up your marketing game and watch your financial advisory practice grow.
1. Create a Distinct Brand
Whether your business is established or you’re just starting out, chances are you’ve heard a lot about branding.
Branding is considered one of the most important foundations of marketing – and it can also be one of the hardest things to get right. By building a brand, you’re conveying to your prospects and current clients what sets you apart and what they can expect from you and your services.
When approaching your brand strategy, make it clear why prospective clients should choose you over your competition. While it’s easy to play it safe and follow what everyone else is doing, some of the most influential brands are successful because they’re different. They’ve identified their target audience precisely and they’ve built a brand that will attract them and resonate with them. They don’t care about appealing to the masses, they want to appeal to their specific audience.
Creating a distinct brand identity could involve choosing unique colors, a unique brand voice, or a unique marketing angle. But not at random. The trick here is to understand your audience deeply so you can position yourself in a way that will make them say, “yes, I want to work with this financial advisor because they get me.”
2. Host a Client Event
As a financial advisor, building trust and long-lasting relationships are foundational to your success. Doing so will keep your existing clients coming back for more, while also encouraging them to make word-of-mouth referrals to your business.
A great way to foster relationships is by hosting an in-person event. This sends the message that you appreciate your clients and network, plus provides you with event photos to share on your social media channels.
To make a client event even more impactful, let each client invite a guest or two of their own. By encouraging your current clients to invite colleagues, friends, and family, every new guest could potentially become a new account.
Not sure what types of event to host? Here are some ideas:
- Client appreciation dinner
- After-hours reception
- Tasting event (wine, food, etc.)
- Learning session or brown bag lunch
- Golf day
- Cooking class
- Fitness event
- Hiking trip
- Painting class
- Art event
- Comedy or open mic night
- Movie night
- Sporting event
At the event, make sure you provide a way for new guests to leave their email addresses, should they wish to be added to your email list. Then, follow up with a personalized thank you email, and add them to your email newsletter list so they’re periodically reminded about your business.
3. Become a Sponsor or Donor
If you’re just starting out, sponsoring and donating can feel out of reach, but it can be well worth the investment.
Things like sponsoring a youth sporting team, a community cause, or an industry event provides a great opportunity to expose your business name to a new group of people. Plus, since you’re giving back to your community, your sponsorship will go a long way in building relationships and generating qualified leads.
When choosing what to sponsor, try to find a cause that’s meaningful to you and also makes sense for your business. You want to feel passionate about it, while also leveraging it as an opportunity to get in front of your target audience.
Similar to sponsorship, donating to a local, national, or international charity gives you the chance to make a difference and be seen. Donations go beyond the monetary value by helping create a positive impact. Plus, when you make a donation, you can share the news with your prospects and clients via a press release, your newsletter, and/or over social media.
The bottom line is that sponsorships and donations benefit both your community and your business. And that’s a win, win.
4. Write for Notable Publications
Establishing yourself as an expert in your field is important for growing your business. A unique way to do this is to write articles, op-eds, or guest blog posts for publications that your target audience is already reading.
There are a wide variety of financial magazines, online publications, and blogs, as well as broader business magazines (such as Forbes), that offer great opportunities to have your perspective heard. Penning an article that’s valuable, informative, and unique is a great way to position yourself as an expert, bolster your prospects’ trust in you, and (ideally) generate a good amount of new leads.
As an added bonus, you can also reshare this content within your own network using your newsletter and social accounts, as well as publish excerpts from it on your own blog.
5. Become a Go-To for Information
A fifth unique way to market your business is to invest in your own content. Building up a large library of helpful information on your website will help attract new clients and retain your existing ones.
Types of content you could create include:
- Blog posts
- Infographics
- Roundups of industry news
- Podcasts
- Ebooks
- Whitepapers
Once you’ve created this content, it’s equally important to amplify it by sharing it with your audience frequently. This could include sharing it on LinkedIn or other social accounts, in your email newsletters, or by emailing it directly to your contacts.
In addition to position yourself as the go-to financial expert, this content can also help enhance your SEO game. (Want to learn more about SEO? Check out our Ultimate Guide to Marketing for Financial Advisors).
Though creating content is extremely valuable, one of the challenges of doing so is that it’s time intensive. That’s why financial advisors often turn to Value Builder for help. Value Builder’s Smart Content feature provides you with access to hundreds of articles, ebooks, and content that you can use as your own. This eliminates the time it takes to write, design, and produce content, plus the content has been vetted by business owners and converts at 4x better than average.
6. Partner with Other Businesses
A free yet impactful way to market your financial advisory practice is to form partnerships with other businesses who serve similar clients but in an adjacent industry.
For instance, chances are, bookkeepers are often asked by their clients if they know a great financial advisor. By partnering with a bookkeeper, you could become that business they refer their clients to. And vice versa.
In some cases, these partnerships are merely based on free, mutual referrals, while other times, a referral may be compensated with a finders fee or referral fee. Whichever model you choose, establish the rules of engagement early on.
To help spur leads for both businesses, you could host joint events or conduct promotions together. This could include:
- Co-hosting a webinar
- Guest posting on each others’ blogs
- Doing shout outs to each other on social media
- Cross-promoting each others’ email lists
7. Be Ridiculously Consistent
This last tip might have you scratching your head. But you’d be surprised how many businesses create a marketing plan, and then don’t stick to it.
If you’re looking for a unique way to market your business, commit to a plan, show up, and execute it. By doing so, you’ll be leaps and bounds ahead of your competitors. How many times have you started listening to a podcast, and then watched it die out after only a dozen episodes? How many times have you seen a business start posting regularly on LinkedIn, only to have the posts fade out after a few months?
Marketing your business consistently is harder than it sounds. Which is why you can make it your competitive advantage.
To help create a plan, try creating a content marketing schedule. Your schedule should coincide with your business goals and strategies, and be implemented consistently and synchronistically across your website, social media, and other marketing channels. A content marketing schedule usually includes the planned time and date of publishing and the metrics you’ll use to track your success.
There are plenty of resources out there that can help you create a content marketing schedule, such as calendars, spreadsheets, lists, or interactive dashboards. For social media posts, scheduling in advance can save a lot of time. For email marketing, automation tools like Value Builder’s Nuture Cycle can be a game changer.
Whatever marketing tactics you choose to do, do them well and do them consistently.
Market Your Financial Advisory Business Today
Now that you have 7 unique ideas for marketing your small financial advisory firm, how will you get started today?
If you’re looking for help, check out Value Builder and see why it’s the leading software for financial advisors who are looking to find, win, and keep more business.
