With the New Year comes a sense of hope and optimism for businesses and consumers alike.  For Financial Advisors, thoughts invariably turn toward energizing one’s practice, growing your book of business or striking out on the path of independence.  

These are exciting times to be in the financial services business and while opportunities abound, market volatility, competitive forces, media proliferation and marketing dissonance clearly pose challenges that must be addressed in the context of your advisor marketing plan. 

The question frequently asked by advisors when it comes to marketing is straight forward enough; “Where should I begin?”  In the words of famed tennis player and social activist, Arthur Ashe; 

“Start where you are.  Use what you have.  Do what you can.” 

Our recommendation is to focus your efforts in the digital marketing area.  Why?  In 2012 digital marketing will continue to grow in importance for small businesses seeking to get found on-line, distinguish their firms for competitive advantage and to enhance client communication in an efficient and effective manner.  And digital marketing starts with a well designed, content rich, user friendly website.    

Does your firm have a website?  Great.  It is time to revisit the site to assess your brand message and the image which your site conveys to determine if the story being told is consistent with the positioning which your firm is striving for.  If you answered “No” then developing a website is a pre-requisite for your practice development efforts.   A website is a window into the firm, its philosophies, service offering, credentials and capabilities.  Done right, an FA firm’s site should serve as the hub for its marketing and client acquisition efforts.   It is highly recommended that you integrate a blog into your website.  Blogging is one of the single best strategies for boosting your firm’s relevancy in the eyes of the search engines, thus improving your website’s search engine rankings. 

With a current, fully developed content rich website in place it is time to focus on boosting the firm’s visibility.  Today’s web 2.0 platforms have made on-page search engine optimization (SEO) efforts more manageable, making it easy to ensure that page titles and meta tags are unique and that H1 tags, keywords and alt text are in place.  You can either do this yourself or work with your web developer to implement this basic SEO checklist.  Once completed, it is time to submit your website to the search engine crawlers and directories to insure that your site is visited and its pages indexed.  In addition, there are numerous business directories which will allow you to list your firm and to establish back links to your website.  These are often free and or may require a small fee.  

Establishing social networking site profiles for the firm and linking these back to your website are valuable ways to assist your clients and prospects in finding you and the firm on-line, access information on the firm or to consume the investor content which the firm publishes and distributes.  Once you begin blogging, social media posts are an excellent mechanism for expanding your message reach and building site traffic.  Blogging and posting increases the relevancy of your website in the eyes of the search engines and can build your domain authority by boosting the number of indexable pages on your website.   

Finally, consider allocating a modest amount of marketing funds on a monthly Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising effort tied to key words and phrases that reflect how consumers conduct online searches within the category.  Be sure to geo-code your PPC efforts to focus on the geographical boundaries of your trading area.  This paid search tactic will compliment your organic SEO efforts and will increase both impressions and clicks for your firm.  If you would like to discuss developing a digital blueprint to guide your firm’s advisor marketing efforts in 2012 please contact Cliff Campeau, Partner at cliffc@evolutionizemypractice.com for a complimentary consultation.