With half of the 2011 year in our review mirror and a rather anemic looking forecast in terms of market growth, FA firms must be prepared to tackle the challenge of lackluster organic revenue growth.   So where do you begin?

The logical place to start is at the beginning.  Do you have a practice marketing plan?  If the answer is “no” you need one.  Assuming you have a plan in place, it is time to assess progress relative to your objectives.  If you’re on track to achieve your lead generation, client acquisition and revenue goals than it may be time to recalibrate your plan.  Recalibrate?  Why in the world would you want to recalibrate when you’re executing your plan to perfection and on-target to achieve your objectives?  The answer is simple, because you’ve achieved momentum with your practice development efforts and you want to optimize your firm’s growth potential.   It is much easier to manage momentum that it is to create it.  If you’re falling short of plan, its time to recalibrate your plan.   Review your messaging and value proposition to make sure it is both on target and easy for prospects to understand.  Shift your tactical orientation from late 3rd and 4th quarter to “Now.”  The value of a new client acquired today is greater than the value of a client acquired three months from now.   Bring marketing funds forward and target the firm’s customer acquisition efforts as your number one priority.  If your prospect pipeline is healthy, than you can focus your marketing efforts on converting those prospects to clients, sooner rather than later.  Personalized e-mails, phone calls and face-to-face meetings can be effective at this stage of the client acquisition funnel.  Having compelling investor oriented content, and a clear perspective on “how” your firm can help a prospective investor and “why” they should consider your firm over any other is an essential ingredient in your communications to existing prospects.  Stoke the fires and introduce relevant “calls to action” to further entice prospects to engage with you.  Examples of various inducements might include offering complimentary planning sessions, portfolio reviews or consultative sessions along with relevant white papers, market summaries and invitations to events featuring presentations on investor topics.  If you’re prospect pipeline is not as robust as needed.  The near-term focus must be on lead generation.  You can leverage the same types of advanced content and inducements referenced earlier to form the basis of your lead generation “offers.”  Where should you begin?  Start with asking your clients for referrals.  Ironically, a majority of FA clients would be more than willing to provide a referral, however, a very small percentage of clients are ever asked.  Secondly, work with your web development or marketing firm to create landing pages for each of your advanced content inducements.  The sole purpose of the landing page is to secure contact information for incoming leads/ prospects.  With landing pages created, you can leverage your social media and blog posting activities to extend your offers and links to the respective landing pages.  Additionally, consider investing in a pay-per-click advertising effort for the next 3 to 6 months as a means of boosting your firm’s visibility and lead generation efforts (utilizing the landing pages you’ve created).   Independent firms have a major advantage over their larger counterparts in adjusting their practice development efforts to change things up in an effort to optimize revenues.  Smaller firms can move more quickly, be more aggressive, do things differently and generally “disrupt” the status quo.   Check out this blog post in Fast Company by Ruth Sherman to learn how “Disruption Theory” and its application can benefit your firm.  If you’re interested in learning more about accelerating your firm’s lead generation efforts, we recommend that you consider starting with our complimentary “Advisor Visibility” audit to assess how well your firm is optimizing its on-line presence click here.