Why Your Financial Advisory Firm Isn't Seeing Marketing Results

Tamra Gaines • August 16, 2024

Summary

For financial advisors, marketing is a long-term strategy that requires consistency and adjustment. Avoid common pitfalls like failing to speak to your target audience, creating uninspiring content, ignoring user experience, neglecting SEO, and relying on generic messaging. By focusing on high-quality, unique content, advisors can differentiate themselves from competitors and build stronger client relationships over time.

 

In the world of finance, just like in marketing, success is a long game.

If you’re expecting immediate results, you’re likely setting yourself up for frustration. But what happens if you've been consistently marketing and still aren't seeing any traction? This is a common concern I hear from financial advisors, many of whom are pouring time and money into their marketing efforts with little to show for it. The key to overcoming this frustration lies in evaluating expectations and fine-tuning your strategy.

Step 1: Are Your Expectations Realistic?

The first thing I ask advisors in this situation is, “What kind of results were you hoping for?” This tells me right away whether their expectations align with the long-term nature of marketing success. If the expectations are realistic, it’s time to dig deeper into what’s holding back results.


Step 2: The Most Common Marketing Mistakes

Through countless marketing audits, I’ve identified some top mistakes that could be slowing your progress:


1. Not Speaking to Your Target Audience

Do you have a crystal-clear picture of your ideal client? Tailoring your messaging to speak directly to them is crucial. Your content must resonate with their specific needs and concerns. For instance, if your marketing focuses on education planning but your audience is ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) individuals without children, you're missing the mark. Financial advisors need to position their services as the solution to their audience’s pain points—otherwise, potential clients will look elsewhere.


2. Boring, Uninspired Marketing Assets

In today’s content-saturated world, traditional text-heavy marketing won't cut it. Your materials must stand out. Even serious white papers can be more engaging with better design, color schemes, and a hint of personality. Consider adding your company’s branding or even using humor where appropriate. Financial services are about trust, but that doesn’t mean your content should be dull. Create valuable content that highlights your services while also making your firm relatable and human.


3. User Experience (UX) Is an Afterthought

Every aspect of your marketing should be designed with user experience in mind. From content layout to navigation, everything should be seamless. Ensure that potential clients don’t have to work to find how your services solve their financial concerns. Always include a clear call-to-action (CTA)—whether it's scheduling a consultation or signing up for a newsletter. And remember, you don’t need to use complicated industry jargon to sound knowledgeable. What clients really care about is whether you understand their problems and can solve them.


4. Poor SEO Practices

Even the best marketing is useless if no one sees it. Optimizing your online presence for search engines is a long-term investment, but it's one that pays off. Start by creating a Google Business Profile and conducting keyword research. Ensure that every piece of content is designed with SEO in mind. The landscape of SEO is evolving, especially with the rise of AI, but one thing remains constant: high-quality, user-first content wins.


5. Ubiquitous Messaging

While it's tempting to rely on pre-packaged content from industry marketing organizations (IMOs), this can make your messaging blend in with every other advisor using the same resources. If you're relying on IMO content, take the extra step to rewrite it or customize the graphics. This will help differentiate your practice from the competition and make your messaging more unique and compelling.


Step 3: Make Your Marketing Work Harder

Ultimately, refining your marketing means honing in on what truly speaks to your audience, creating visually engaging assets, improving user experience, and ensuring discoverability through SEO. By avoiding these common pitfalls and consistently producing high-quality content that stands out, you’ll be positioning yourself ahead of the competition.


The road to marketing success might be long, but with the right adjustments, you’ll start seeing the payoff in lasting client relationships and business growth.


If you're looking for a marketing audit or how to level up your marketing game, contact us today. We're here to help you make your marketing efforts a success.

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Top 5 Marketing Mistakes Financial Advisors Make

By TAMRA GAINES • August 4, 2023
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.