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Financial Advisor Revenue Strategy
Financial Advisor Marketing, Revenue Architecture, Revenue GrowthIndependent Advisors need a strategy-led, systematic growth program.
The Financial Advisor SMART BOOK™ outlines the Revenue Architecture Methodology that financial advisors can use to add structure and predictability to their revenue engine. We introduce nine steps and advisor-specific marketing and sales strategies that are helping advisors capture client value.
The comprehensive guide helps independent financial advisors build a strategy-led, systematic growth program with 9 proven strategies. The goal is to help advisors:
Having a vision and game plan for growth is essential for financial advisors to thrive in a challenging marketplace. The Smart Book™ outlines how you can achieve more predictable and sustainable revenue growth by establishing a Revenue Architecture that fits your firm. The key is to commit to a systematic sales and marketing process by following the 9 proven strategies to guide your approach.
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R Stands for Relevance: Marketing Automation That Works
Buyer Engagement, Financial Advisor Marketing, Investment Management, Revenue Architecture, Revenue Marketing, Revenue StrategyFinancial advisors are an amazingly difficult prospect to engage. They are incredibly busy and already have a wealth of resources available to them; in fact, it may be fair to ask if they even need to engage with wholesalers? That’s why we say the best way to convert financial advisors to customers is to build your marketing automation program around them.
Lead generation starts with effective segmentation
Before focusing on key strategies, Sales and Marketing must have defined a set of engagement personas and customer segments. Marketing has worked with personas for at least a decade, but only since the advent of marketing automation software have engagement personas become empowered and brought to life.
Defining financial advisor segments for lead generation
Creating clarity with Sales is a two-step process:
While it may take several iterations to get lead scoring and grading optimized, the process should be fruitful for Sales and Marketing. It crystallizes Marketing and Sales perspectives around which advisors are most profitable and which digital behaviors are believed to be most relevant to a sale. Some marketing automation vendors have one score that represents profitability and interest. However, being able to separate advisor behaviors from profitability factors simplifies discussions by clarifying customer segments by profitability as seen in the above graphic. As an example, Pardot applies a numerical value for an advisor’s lead score and a letter grade (A-F) for an advisor’s expected profitability.
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Market Segmentation: Select Markets and Isolate Audience for Engagement
Account-Based Marketing, B2B Marketing and Sales, Revenue Growth, Revenue Marketing, Revenue StrategyThe universe of markets and buyers is incredibly diverse, and your decisions about where and whom to target can make or break your revenue performance. A company can’t be all things to all buyers in all markets. As the competitive landscape is always changing, with more players vying for prospects’ time and attention, it is vital to select markets where you can effectively compete and win. Then, continuously segment the market to isolate specific audiences to engage at the right time and place with the right message.
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Financial Advisor Go-to-Market Model
Financial Advisor Marketing, Revenue ArchitectureA go-to-market model is based on your business model and your target audience of personas. It helps you envision the best ways to access your ideal clients. Yet, in addition to understanding how you might best access your particular target client segment, you should consider what is best for you and your firm. For example, what volumes do you need? How comfortable are you with outbound prospecting? To what degree are you comfortable using social media or digital marketing?
Begin by determining how to access your ideal clients.
A. Determine your territories or market focus as a team – who will focus on which prospects or segments.
B. Identify referral partners (asset management relationships, custodians, referral networks, COIs, etc.)
C. Identify marketplaces or communities that may be relevant (e.g., FeeOnlyNetwork, Investopedia, NAPFA, FPA Planner, Zoe Financial, SmartAsset, and others)
D. Identify touch points should might based on the audience, e.g. inbound and outbound marketing, PR/media outreach, advertising, re-marketing, high-value content, and thought leadership, webinars.
E. Identify social and other media channels you might use to reach prospective clients (Google or Facebook Advertising, LinkedIn Sponsored posts, etc., radio, print), media/PR, content/thought leadership publishing/syndication, speaking, charitable activity, e-mail, apps such as a retirement readiness quiz, webinars).
F. Consider what capabilities you will need to support your go-to-market strategy, including web channels, collateral, technologies, processes, skills, and measurement/monitoring.
G. Align your team around the go-to-market model and high-level campaign strategies, ensuring buy-in and supporting execution commitment.
Target selectively:
Explore all 9 strategies for growth by downloading the Financial Advisor SMART BOOK™.
Enterprise Funnel Math
Account-Based Marketing, B2B Marketing and Sales, Chief Revenue Officer, Revenue Architecture, Revenue GrowthEnterprise funnel math exercises help align marketing and sales teams by zeroing in on critical funnel metrics like Sales and Marketing Qualified Inquiries (e.g. MQI) and Marketing and Sales Qualified Leads (MQL and SQL).
An enterprise funnel math model can help you identify the mix of tactics for for different funnel characteristics. For example, a sales-driven funnel might be designed with sales-led prospection activities and ABM tactics. A high volume lead gen funnel might be driven by Inbound Marketing or Paid SEM. Each funnel will have its own “DNA” and can be modeled top to bottom across deal stages to inform go-to-market strategies and budgeting.
Defining Your Funnels
A simple spreadsheet can help you produce a flexible working model that can be tailored to each company. To make it work, it is important to identify the right funnels or segments. The more granular your funnels are, the more accurate the funnel model will be – but too many funnels will add complexity. So, we typically identify 4-8 segments that represent distinct marketing and sales motions. Select segment that have a distinctive “funnel DNA” – not necessarily a P&L, or a geography segment. Often a funnel is centered around a product or service offering. Funnels can always be rolled up into geos, or P&Ls.
We develop Funnel Math Models with several tabs:
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Integrated Marketing and Sales Process
Account-Based Marketing, B2B Marketing and Sales, Chief Revenue Officer, Closed-loop Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Automation, Revenue Architecture, Revenue Systems, Sales Enablement, Sales ExcellenceBuyers want an efficient, effective, quality buying experience. They don’t consider whether their experience is “marketing-generated” or “sales-generated”. They choose if they want to engage with your web content, 3rd party digital outposts or marketplaces or with your sales people. They most likely will interact with all of these in different sequences and in unstructured and unpredictable ways.
Buyer engagement efforts take place all along the buyer journey and to deliver the experiences buyers expect and maximize your revenue impact, you need an integrated marketing and sales process.
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