Remember the movie Field of Dreams?

Many financial advisors are guilty of what I call “Kevin Costner Syndrome”—a reference to the film’s leading actor. Costner played a farmer who responded to a mysterious voice’s admonition to build a baseball field among his crops. “If you build it, he will come” was sufficient motivation for Costner’s character.

And I’m convinced that lots of financial advisors behave the same way. Do you believe that merely being a skilled advisor is all it takes to be successful—that being smart and talented is enough to get clients to come?

If that’s what you believe, you’re wrong. I know lots of talented advisors who are struggling to make a living—for the simple reason that nobody knows they’re talented.

No matter how good your advising and planning skills are, you can’t get very far if nobody knows it. Simply being good isn’t good enough.
How, then, do you get the word out to ensure that plenty of people hear about you and your abilities?

The only way you can make that happen is to engage in marketing. I know, that’s a dirty word in our business. Many (most?) advisors regard marketing as distasteful.

Well, get over it. If you want people to hire you, you have to invite them to do so. That means marketing. The good news is that it’s worth it: Well-deployed marketing techniques will generate clients for you—more than you probably anticipate.

My firm has found that spreading the word involves four key steps: (1) identifying our target market, (2) choosing our approach, (3) deciding what platform to use, and (4) sending effective messages. Let’s explore each of these.

1. Finding Your Target Audience
You might think of your target audience demographically, using such data points as their education, income or investable assets. But I urge you to also consider “psychographics.” Are those who see your message the ones you really want to see it? They might meet your education, income or asset-level criteria, but what if they are primarily do-it-yourselfers? If you are an asset allocator, spending a lot of money on ads that reach market timers is a waste of everyone’s time.

Car makers work hard to make sure the people seeing their campaigns are potential buyers. You want to take the same approach.

 

2. Choosing Your Approach
There are two key ways to approach potential clients. Both are effective and acceptable; you just have to decide which best suits your style, ability and preference.

Take Frank Perdue and Martha Stewart. The late Perdue sold chickens, while Stewart teaches you how to cook a chicken. Either you can build a campaign to persuade people to buy your services, or build a campaign that explains what your services are, why listeners/readers/viewers should care and how they’ll benefit. Frank vs. Martha, in other words, is sales vs. education.

I chose the Martha route (minus prison) because our firm would rather be known as educators than as salespeople. This also explains my radio and television shows, books, seminars, newsletters, website and social media activities.

But we must acknowledge that Frank was highly successful, too, proving that the sales approach does work. (If TV ads didn’t work, there would be no late-night infomercials.)

3. Choosing Your Platform
The platform—where you will display your message—is vital. You obviously want to reach the most qualified leads for the lowest cost. So which is better: an ad on the radio or in a newspaper? To convert different audience sizes and ad costs into comparable data, the media industry offers two key statistics: CPM and AQH. CPM is cost per thousand (“m” is derived from the Latin for thousand); AQH is the average number of listeners or views per quarter-hour. Like unit pricing in a supermarket, these data will let you easily compare the costs of using different media outlets. Every platform provider will readily provide you with this data, and if they can’t or won’t, skip them—just like you’d reject a mutual fund that refused to publish a prospectus.

Advisors who ignore CPM and AQH make expensive and shortsighted mistakes. I recall an advisor who once told me he paid $200 for an ad at one media outlet, rejecting another offer that would have cost $800. Because he hadn’t looked at the CPM and AQH, he failed to realize that the outlet he selected was costing him three times more to reach each qualified lead than the other would have cost.

 

4. Effective Messaging
When you’re ready to engage in your campaign, whatever the platforms are, it might have just one single message. Pay attention to ads on TV and radio, in newspapers and magazines and in online banners, and you’ll see this every time. The nation’s biggest advertisers—Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Kraft, Ford Motor Co., you name it—all sell a slew of products, but any one ad only addresses one of them. It’s the SUV, the shampoo, the mac and cheese, the cat food—but never more than one product in the same ad. (Unless it’s an “institutional” ad, where the company itself is what’s being promoted, as in General Electric’s campaign that it “brings good things to life.”)

I know you have a lot of knowledge and a lot to say. You have so much to tell people. Tough. If you want your campaign to be successful, make it a single message. If you have lots to say, run lots of campaigns. Otherwise, people will be confused. They will lose interest. They won’t understand. They won’t remember, or if they do, they won’t remember you favorably.

Another important point: Your message must reach each target at least seven times. Why seven? Because the first two times, the audience isn’t really paying attention. The third time, listeners or viewers might recall that they’ve heard or seen it before, but they won’t make a connection to it, or to you.

By the fourth time, they’ll start to recall that they’ve seen or heard it and, if the topic is of interest, try to remember. By the time they get to seven exposures, there will be some recognition and retention. I’m not making any of this up. Academic studies of advertising have confirmed all this for decades.

This explains why local car dealers run ads constantly, even though you only buy a car every four years or so. They continuously run ads so that you’ll think of them when you’re ready to buy your next car.

So you can’t just advertise in April because that’s when people get their tax refunds. You have to advertise throughout the year so when that refund check finally arrives, prospective clients know it’s you they need to call.

You must keep your message fresh, too. Every message, no matter how good it is or how well phrased, eventually becomes stale and has to be redone. That’s why you don’t see the Budweiser frogs anymore and why the Geico cavemen are gone and the gecko is on its way out. “Everyone knows that.” And when everyone knows it, you need to start getting them to know something else.   

Finally, be sure your messages are as professional as you wish to be perceived. Never disparage. Our firm doesn’t waste any of its time (or communication budget) telling people that we think a given competitor is foolish or wrong. Let your competitors spend their money disseminating their message. You spend your money giving out yours, and leave it at that.

So if you build it, will they come? Only in the movies. In the real world, we not only have to build it. We have to tell people that we built it. If you don’t want to spend the time, effort and money that this requires, then join a larger, more successful firm that will do it for you. This will let you do what you do best: provide advice to clients. 

Ric Edelman is the chairman and CEO of Edelman Financial Services LLC, a registered investment advisor. He is an investment advisor representative who offers advisory services through EFS and a registered principal of (offering securities through) Sanders Morris Harris Inc., an affiliated broker/dealer, member FINRA/SIPC. You can connect with him on LinkedIn or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/RicEdelman. Follow him on Twitter at @RicEdelman.