Your IndustryMar 28 2018

Getting the marketing right

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Finding new clients is not always easy, and while many people will come to you through word-of-mouth recommendation – which let’s face it is worth its weight in gold – that may not generate enough business for advisers who are looking to expand significantly.

But targeting the right kind of clients through marketing is never easy, and there is a danger that you could spend a lot of time and money getting enquiries through the door, only to find that when it comes down to it, the potential client is not the right fit for you, or vice versa.

However, if you are looking at getting yourself noticed on an altogether bigger scale, you will need to take some action, and it is important to be honest with yourself about whether you are able to do it.

One, decide what you want to achieve with your marketing – setting up a strategy without an end goal is like going for a drive without a destination. 

You might see some nice scenery along the way, but there is no real purpose behind what you are doing, and you will be burning money en route. You have no way of determining whether your strategy is a success without first identifying the goal or goals you are aiming for.

You might say that the goal is ‘to get more clients’, well great, yes that is a goal. But how many more clients? And what sort of clients? The detail needs to be nailed down before you can really push towards your goals with any certainty.

Two, identify how and where you are going to target your efforts – this is a tricky one. You obviously need the type of client who is going to be open to the service you offer, but you need to be sure that any money you spend on marketing to them is going to pay dividends. That is the ideal scenario, but unfortunately marketing and PR generally is not an exact science, which means you are going to have to be more canny in the way you approach it.

For example, you might think it is a good idea to put an advert in, say, The Daily Telegraph to attract clientele. The chances are this is going to be the right demographic for you, but also remarkably expensive. You would need to attract a lot of clients to make the outlay worthwhile. You then have to question how effective simple advertising is – how many times have you reacted to an advert either online or in the newspapers in the last 12 months? My guess is not often, since most of us read the news rather than reading the ads.

Three, decide what you can use to create a news buzz about your business – the last point brings us neatly onto this one. If you can get your business in the news, then you have managed to overcome one of the biggest hurdles to reaching your audience.

Many advisory firms do this extremely well, Hargreaves Lansdown comes to mind immediately as one of the firms that has developed excellent relationships with journalists to help promote their business. But there are many others.

This is one area where you really do have to be brutally honest with yourself though. Just because you find something interesting about your business does not mean that the rest of the world will. So, be objective. Why would anyone want to read about what you have to say? If you cannot come up with at least two or three reasons, then come up with another idea. You will have to sell – metaphorically speaking – the idea to a journalist, and that will be harder than you might expect.

Four, identify what skills you have in-house to make your strategy work effectively – if you have people who love to be in the limelight and are happy to put themselves forward, that is great. 

But there is more to it than that. They also have to be prepared to take calls at unsociable hours, interrupt family events to speak to a journalist at short notice, be prepared to stand up to scrutiny, and even be the point of contact when things have not gone well. It is a big ask. But getting this right will help to make your business a ‘go to’ for comment and information, which in turn raises your profile.

One of the biggest gripes I hear from advisers is that journalists go to the same people for comment time after time. It is because they make themselves available to provide comment right away. Journalists have no loyalty to one firm or adviser, so they will use the quickest route to get the information they need. If that is you, great, you are onto a winner.

Five, decide if you need help - You might find you need some expert help, although it is not always necessary. But again, be realistic. 

If you are not prepared to put up with the inconvenience of working to create marketing collateral or digging up stories that will help to promote your business, then you might need to pay someone who is. An expert will be faster at it too, so it could be a cost saving in the long run.

Alison Steed is a freelance journalist