Tired of Hit-and-Miss Marketing? Try These “Growth Hacks”
The solo financial advisor must be a jack of all trades, comfortable wearing many hats, and able to straddle diverse — but still key — tasks handled by standalone departments at larger firms. This calls for a solid sense of self, extraordinary listening skills, and instinctive adaptability.
To help, we provide this guide for using “growth hacking” around marketing efforts, addressed primarily to novice RIA owners and new independent broker-dealer affiliates — but with good information for veteran advisors as well.
Many sole practitioners struggle to function as their own chief marketing officers, chief investment officers, chief compliance officers, and, of course, heads of operations. In contrast, other small-firm owners feel they have it down cold, especially when it comes to marketing. They extol their marketing methodologies, but can’t point to verification.
What do both groups of advisors have in common? Setting aside their undoubted abilities as financial advisors, most advisors, whether or not they feel confident about their marketing, are unfamiliar with the emerging digital marketing landscape.
Understanding How Growth Hacking Can Help You Compete Digitally
Let’s outline the growth hacker’s approach to marketing, which is startup friendly, cost-effective, and is used to get new businesses off the ground.
Growth hacking is a marketing-and-promotion-based growth strategy focused solely on rapid business growth.
Growth hacking uses a series of small tests to measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, overall client satisfaction, and the following metrics:
Acquisition: rate at which new prospects are attracted
Activation: rate at which prospects become clients
Retention: rate at which clients are retained over time