PRACTICE MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS

Harteting

5 Steps to a New Marketing Plan

by Kristen Luke

or many of you, this time

of year is the end of your
fiscal year. Soon you'll begin
to review your year-end financial
statements and determine how you
measured up against your goals. Did you
achieve your assets under management
or revenue goal, or did you fall short?
If you easily meet or exceed your revenue goals this year because of market
performance, you might start thinking
that revenue will grow at the same pace
year after year. When the stock market
is bullish, AUM and revenue grow easily
and organically, and this can lull some
advisers into a false sense of security
that revenue will continue to increase
even if no effort is made to market their
business. As we learned in 2008, this is
a dangerous assumption.
If you do not meet your goals, you
might analyze what went wrong and
how you can make changes next year.
Did you fail to market consistently? Did
you not get in front of enough of the
right types of people? Unless you make
changes to your marketing strategy, you
can expect the same results next year.
Now is the time to develop your
sales and marketing strategy to achieve
your goals for 2014. By following these
20

five steps, you'll be able to compose a

comprehensive marketing plan before
we ring in the new year.

for realistic
timelines. It is common
to be overly optimistic
and try to accomplish
every tactic in the first
quarter. This can rarely
be accomplished and will
be counterproductive to
your overall marketing
success."
Step 1: Estabiish Goals and Objectives
Start your marketing plan with your
end goal in mind. Choose the three
goals and objectives that will be most
impactful on your business. Refrain
from choosing too many objectives as
you will either dilute your efforts or set
yourself up for failure.
Ultimately, marketing should support
revenue growth. For mostfirms,the
primary goal will be a revenue, AUM, or
client goal. Beyond afinancialgoal, your

Journai of Financiai Planning | December 2013

other two objectives will most likely fall

under one of these 10 general areas:
Branding and messaging.
Developing a brand and message
that attracts your ideal client
and differentiates you from your
competition.
Awareness. Executing strategies
that will get the word out about
your company.
Lead generation. Implementing campaigns to generate new
prospects.
Client referrals. Establishing
processes and communication
strategies to encourage referrals
from clients.
Center of influence (COI)
referrals. Developing a method
for meeting COIs and encouraging
them to refer clients.
Cross-marketing programs. Creating a program to market additional
services to your existing clients.
Niche marketing. Implementing
strategies to reach a niche market
or demographic.
Lead nurturing. Developing
systems and campaigns to stay
top-of-mind with prospects.
Transition marketing. Developing
rPAJournal.org

Marketing
a strategy to communicate major
changes in your firm such as a
merger, acquisition, succession, or
other transition.
Recruiting. Establishing a
strategy for attracting new books
of business.

PRACTICE MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS

Average Marketing Budgets for Various Sized Advisory Firms

Annual revenue

$3M-

$250-

$500K-

$250K

$500K

$1M

$2M

$3M

$5M

1.2%

3.5%

3.8%

2.5%

$9,092

$54,912

$89,546

$99,64

5.3%

Percent of annual

2.0%

$1M-

$2M-

Less than

revenue
Average dollar

$8,747

$7,851

amount for firms in

this revenue range

Step 2: Identify Strategies and Tactics

Afrer you have identified your objectives, the next step is to identify the
strategies or plan of action designed
to achieve your goal. Just as with your
objectives, you will want to focus on a
few strategies that you can execute well
and that will be most impactful to your
business. You should develop one to five
strategies to support each of the goals or
objectives you originally identified.
Example strategy; Develop marketing
communication materials that communicate our value and expertise in the niche
market of self-employed attorneys.
After you define your plan of action,
detail the individual tactics you will use
to execute your strategy. You also should
include who on your team is responsible
for ensuring each tactic is implemented
successfully and on time.
Example tactic 1: Create a new
website that speaks directly to how we
work with self-employed attorneys and
differentiates our firm from other fee-only
registered investment advisers. Responsible: John C.
Example tactic 2: Develop a digital
pitch hook that can be used on an iPad by
all of our advisers that communicates who
we are, how we are different, our process,
our investment philosophy, and the solutions
we provide our clients. Responsible: Dana F.

Step 3: Set a Budget

Next, set the budget required to fully
implement your marketing plan.
Depending on your quality requirements and your resourcefulness, you
can spend anywhere from zero dollars to
hundreds of thousands of dollars. How
much you should spend on marketing also

FPAJournal.org

Source: Angie Herbers Inc. (www.anqieherbers.com)

varies depending on the size and stage of

your business, and this number can range
from 0 percent to 10 percent of annual
revenue, depending on who you Eisk.
Consulting and research firm, Angie
Herbers Inc., has studied the marketing
expenditure of several hundred financial
advisory firms and has determined
the average marketing budget for an
advisory firm to be between 1.2 percent
and 5.3 percent of annuid revenue. Use
the table above to help estimate how
much you should be spending.
For firms with more than $5 million
in revenue, a good rule of thumb is to
spend 2.5 percent of annual revenue on
marketing. Whatever budget you set,
make sure that your budget is in line
with your revenue goals so you will see
an overall positive return on investment
at the end of the year.

Step 4: Create a Schedule

With a plan of action created, the
next step is to establish a timeline for
accomplishing each tactic. This can be
done on a spreadsheet or on a calendar.
Allow for realistic timelines. It is
common to be overly optimistic and try
to accomplish every tactic in the first
quarter. This can rarely be accomplished
and will be counterproductive to your
overall marketing success.

and build the dashboards and reports

that allow you to see the results of your
marketing efforts in real time. If this is not
an option for you, you need to be tracking
this same information on a spreadsheet
(see "Measuring Marketing ROI," in the
February 2013 issue of the Journal).
At the end of each quarter, review
where the majority of new leads,
prospects, and clients are coming from.
You may find that the source for each of
these types of contacts is not the same.
For example, the majority of your new
leads might come from your website, the
majority of actual prospects who come
in for an appointment might come from
referrals from a center of influence, and
the majority of new clients might come
as a result of client referrals. Knowing
this information will help you identify
where to spend your time and money
most effectively. Just be sure to give each
campaign at least six months to a year
before you determine its effectiveness.

The Ciocic Is Ticking for 2014

Assess your marketing efforts from this
year and determine what you are going
to do differently next year to achieve
success. Whether you achieved your
goals or not, January 1 provides a fresh
start with new goals and new opportunities to be able to achieve them. I

Step 5: Measure Resuits

Kristen Luke is president and CEO of Wealth Manage-

The final step in the marketing plan process is to measure your results and make
adjustments throughout the year. Ideally,
you should track the source of all new
leads, prospects, and clients in your CRM

ment Marketing Inc. (www.wealthmanagement

marketing.net), a firm specializing in outsourced marketing services to RIAs, and co-founder of The Mercato
(wuTO.themercato.net), an online marketplace featuring
do-it-yourself took, templates, and training for advisers.

December 2013

| Journal of Financial Planning

21

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