There are tons of financial products on the market, tons of pitches by asset managers, insurance companies and other product providers and distributors to get financial advisors to use their wares, and not a ton of time for advisors to look at all of those pitches. The result? Marketing overload.
According to a report entitled “Marketing Effectively to Financial Advisors—Insights and Opportunities 2016” from Practical Perspectives, a Boston-based wealth management industry consultant, 59% of advisors perceived that the volume of marketing outreach they get rose last year, even as few advisors have set aside more time to look at these communications.
By and large, advisors are far more likely to consider communications and contacts from sources they already rely on, especially their current broker-dealer/custodian and asset managers they invest with. Furthermore, advisors are at least two times more likely to pay attention to or respond to face-to-face contacts than to be motivated to take action from e-mails or telephone calls. As for trying to reach advisors via social media: Uh-uh. According to the report, social media and text messages are the formats least likely to grab the attention of advisors.
Advisors say companies with the most useful marketing outreach include American Funds, JP Morgan, BlackRock/iShares, Franklin Templeton, Vanguard, Jackson National and Fidelity. It helps that those firms already do a lot of business with advisors.
The report incorporates input from nearly 750 advisors across industry channels, and they collectively said that financial services companies should make their pitches more concise, focused on relevant topics and with messages tailored to the advisor and his or her clients. They also suggest toning down the quantity of contacts directed at them.
“Advisors consider the marketing outreach they receive from product providers and other sources to be useful, but most don’t have the time to digest the messages given the sheer volume and other day-to-day priorities,” says Howard Schneider, president of Practical Perspectives. “The struggle is how you get your communication to stand out and attract the attention of advisors in a highly cluttered environment with so many firms competing for the chance to connect.”