Conferences are one way to get new clients. So is a friendly chat with an accountant. But what about a wine tasting? How about an afternoon with a bouncy house for your clients’ grandkids?
How about using a Lucite stand in your lobby to remind people of things you can do for them that they didn’t know about? Like estate planning or tax optimization? Your lobby is valuable real estate you might not be thinking about.
Susan Kay, a vice president and a director of business development at MFS Fund Distributors Inc., is a fountain of ideas that she’s derived with the advisory firms she’s worked with. But those great ideas aren’t enough, she said. You have to put them on a calendar of events and have a written plan—with an annual budget and an ability to calculate your return on investment.
Kay spoke in a webinar at the Advisor Growth Summit, presented by Financial Advisor on March 24. She said that advisory firms should have a plan for the year—things they can plan around every month whether it’s International Women’s Day luncheons or Daytona 500 tailgate parties.
Having a written plan with automatic contacts is the best way to connect with the right demographic groups, especially the beneficiaries who will one day inherit the money you now manage (and might well lose if you aren’t careful).
Having a plan means you know exactly how much it will cost to brand and marketing yourself, Kay said.
“The best teams in the country have written down: ‘Here’s all the things we want to accomplish during the year,” she said during the webinar. “Here’s what we think it’s going to cost us to accomplish those things. And what I particularly like about that: You now know what it’s going to cost to brand yourself and to market yourself. What happens is intuitive and naturally it doesn’t slow you down. Once you’ve figured out ‘Here’s my nut. I’m putting my dollar nut on my white board and now I’m going to have some fun drawing it down, cause I’ve got these plans I’ve already decided I’m going to do,’ it’s far easier to implement a marketing plan once you’ve made those decisions.”
She brought slides to drive home the point: the marketing calendars for three different advisories she works with. One of the firms has a campaign called “Beneficiary Connect,” which involves hosting events several months in a row—including a Super Bowl party in February and a mother/daughter Mother’s Day brunch in May.
Are your clients’ grandparents planning to leave money to grandchildren? Are you calling them to see who their beneficiaries are? Can you have a pumpkin patch event for them in October?
But Kay also tries to remind people: Don’t bring a net to a spearfishing contest. In a follow-up interview with Financial Advisor, she said that narrowcasting is important.