5 Marketing Mistakes RIAs Need to Avoid
5 Marketing Mistakes to Avoid
1. Not being hyper-specific about your target customer
We hear this on nearly every introductory call with our clients, "we want clients to come in at $500,000 or more." In our opinion that target market is too broad.
The trick to being successful with digital marketing is to be very specific about the kind of client you want knocking on your door. One of our most successful clients focuses on targeting divorced women in southern Florida, and does so by finding shared attributes between her clients and gets very specific when defining the target audience of our advertisements. In addition to audience definition, she forms strategic partnerships with local, high profile, divorce lawyers, has started a local women-only travel club and has become an expert in a very lucrative niche.
2. Not having a specific strategy
Just like when defining a target customer, strategy needs to be hyper-specific and needs to correlate with your broader business goals. Lets say your goal is to grow 20% year over year. How are you planing to do this? Through client referrals? Partnerships? New Business? Mergers and Acquisitions? Let's assume its through client referrals, how are you tracking those results, how are you incentivizing your clients to make the introductions? and how are you making sure you are getting the right types of clients?
Not being specific and purposeful with your strategy can result in a lot of wasted resources, time and money. When digital marketing is done right you can build sequences that not only attract new clients, but help you execute on your strategy by creating systematic sequences to follow up with clients, automatically send out reminders, and deliver in depth tracking to measure what is and isn't working.
3. Not being mobile-friendly
In our article "5 key ways for RIAs to succeed with digital marketing" we said that if you are not on mobile, you don't exist. Many RIAs have great websites, but those websites are not responsive (mobile-friendly), and in today's world the majority of web traffic is through mobile devices. The mobile-friendly approach also needs to extend beyond the website, for example any newsletters or email needs to be optimized for mobile, if the client needs to pinch and zoom around your message they will get frustrated and not read it.
In our experience, marketing needs to be focused on a mobile first strategy, text needs to be replaced with engaging images, and it all needs to be tested to ensure your are spending your advertising budget wisely.
4. Not being creative with content
Sharing content on a regular basis is key to digital marketing success. If your target audience sees the same post 10 times, they will quickly stop paying attention, but posting fresh content on a regular basis not only increases engagement, but also builds a following. Getting your content distributed on the right networks is critical, but so is being creative with your message.
Lets consider the advisor who focuses on divorced women. It's easy to post a article that is titled "How we help divorced women" but that is just what you do, not why you do it, a much more effective title would be "5 things every woman should know before a divorce." This approach is not only appealing the advisor's current client but is something that will get traction with new potential clients, and will likely get a good distribution through shares on social media.
5. Not being focused on lead-generation
Another common mistake we see, is that advisors don't focus their websites on lead-generation. If you have worked so hard to get your target client to your website, its time to capture them as a lead. This can sound easier then it actually is.
We live in a world where no one wants another email in their inbox so the key is finding the right message that gets someone to 'risk' their contact information to get your content. Creating infographics, blog posts, or simple one or two page flyers focused on specific topics is a great way to get your prospect to exchange their information for content. This is where we pull in the other 4 mistakes, and when we work with clients to execute their digital marketing, we get hyper-specific client targeting, a clear strategy, creative and mobile friendly content with high levels of engagement and ultimately lead generation.
