Five Marketing Problems Advisors Face Today

I’ve been in this business a very long time and I can tell you first hand that, today, advisors face more challenges than they ever have before. Here are five of the top challenges advisors face in today’s constantly changing financial world.

 (1)    Measuring marketing ROI. With more and more marketing programs and crazy offers and claims from marketing companies you need to be able to measure results and the value of every dollar you spend. Things like investment, number of selling opportunities created, and pipeline value are all critical must know facts for advisors. Today the average consumers decision is 60% made on the need for a product by the time they engage an advisor. This means marketing is more important than ever!

(2) Working with vendors and agencies. Many advisors get lured in by promises from then their salespeople that they can do things that others can't. They can't do anything special. You shouldn't be surprised that someone selling list and/or mailing services will make huge claims. Each year surprising however how many advisors fall for these claims.

  (3)  Developing the right collateral: knowing the right collateral that resonates with the customer, how often it used, and the value of marketing materials key for advisors when working with prospects and clients. Clients only different type of content – papers and brochures, newsletters, letters, to name a few. That ability develop the right collateral the right point in the client/prospect's journey is critical to success in demand generation, customer acquisition and customer lifecycle marketing.

  (4) Budget management: how much budget do you have versus how much can you spend? Are you desirous of a champagne campaign but have a beer budget? How much shoe leather are you willing to put in to your marketing campaign? Without knowing what your total budget is it is virtually impossible to plan strategic and effective marketing campaign. Are you able to hire your own team or do you need to hire outside resources?

   (5)   Speed and agility: great marketing teams are constantly creating content; press releases, white papers, marketing campaigns, advertising and more. While your plan needs to be strategic it also needs to be tactical and agile the same time marketing teams are facing larger hurdles than ever before to get advisors in front of highly motivated prospects in sufficient quantities to achieve their financial objectives.