It’s an age-old business conundrum that’s especially applicable for financial planners. You need a marketing plan to grow your business… But you don’t have the time or money to implement said plan. An automated – yet customisable – marketing solution might be the answer to your woes.
Email is still king
Despite the rise of LinkedIn marketing and video clips, email marketing still offers the best ROI of all online marketing tools.
The challenge for financial services professionals is to create content that stands out. Content that is scrupulously researched, elegantly written, relevant to your audience … And entertaining to read.
Consistency is also key. For content marketing to really work, you need to be communicating with clients and prospectives on a monthly basis.
The problem
Penning a monthly newsletter that’s packed with relevant content is time-consuming and writing might not be your forte. You could contract a boutique financial services marketing agency to do it – but the costs will soon add up.
The solution
In recent years a couple of automated marketing solutions have become available to South African financial planners. By scaling the process of writing, designing and distributing the production of client newsletters these disruptors have been able to significantly reduce costs for their customers – sometimes as much as tenfold.!
While the exact process differs slightly from firm to firm the basic concept remains the same. The marketing company pays professional writers to write content that is accurate, entertaining and relevant to the prevailing economic climate in South Africa. Right now, for example, an article about how to respond to a bear market would be especially useful for many investors.
In addition to procuring professionally written articles, the marketing provider also designs email templates for each customer: these will typically include your company logo and contact details and be designed according to your preferred colour palette. And they use bulk mailing technology to email them to your subscriber list (while taking care of all POPIA requirements).
What’s the catch?
Done right, there is no catch. But, of course, things can go wrong. One common pitfall is that the articles aren’t up to scratch. Either due to the calibre of the writing or because the financial content lacks depth.
Another frequent gripe with some automated solutions is that every advisor who signs up for the service sends exactly the same client newsletter every month. This is why it’s vital that you choose a provider who allows you to customise your newsletters – either with your own bespoke content or with articles from the provider’s library (or a combo of both).
The bottom line
Signing up for an automated marketing solution can be a real game-changer for a financial planning practice. For less than the price of a meal for two, you can send an informative and entertaining monthly update to all of your current and prospective clients. Financial planning is all about relationships and sending a high-quality monthly newsletter is a fantastic way of fostering these.
For further information, contact us