As a financial advisor, you are always on the lookout for ways to improve your marketing strategy. One of the biggest problems facing the industry is spending large amounts of money offering high commitment offers to a cold audience. This results in low lead volume and high cost per lead.
The quintessential example of this is the direct mail seminar, where advisors spend $7,500 offering an in-person seminar to a cold audience. The problem with this approach is that only 3% of the local market is actively looking for what you have to offer. This means that at least 97% of your marketing budget is completely wasted from the start.
The average response to a seminar mailer is probably between half a percent and 1%. Wasting 99% of your marketing budget is not a good sign of success. The reason for this is that if only 3% of the market is actively looking for what you have to offer, and you’ve got five or six other advisors offering the same thing, you’re all fighting over a small percentage of the larger market.
To improve your marketing strategy, you can consider reducing the commitment level that you’re asking from prospects. For example, instead of offering a seminar, you can offer an online webinar or an online video course. By doing this, you’ve reduced the potential threat of a sales situation and reduced the sales reluctance of consumers. This, in turn, will increase your response rate.
Another way to reduce the commitment level is to offer a low-end, low commitment offer. This could be as simple as offering a case study or driving them to get a book that you’ve written. By doing this, your lead volume will go up, and your cost per lead will go down.
The job of your marketing is not to get people to the seminar or appointment, but to identify who has some degree of interest. For example, you can run a 7,500 piece mail campaign and promote a book. Consumers can go online and get a free copy of your book or a white paper, or case study. By doing this, you can identify the 500 people out of the 10,000 who have at least some degree of interest and are interested enough to take action.
In conclusion, as a financial advisor, it’s important to have a marketing strategy that works. One way to improve your strategy is to reduce the commitment level you’re asking from prospects. You can offer an online webinar or a low-end, low commitment offer. The job of your marketing is not to get people to the seminar or appointment, but to identify who has some degree of interest. This way, you can focus your marketing efforts on the people who are most likely to take action.
