5 Steps for Advisors to Define Their Marketing Needs for 2023

As January kicks off, many firm owners are taking the time to create New Year’s resolutions for both their business and their own personal growth. Perhaps you’re in the process of setting goals for your own firm, like growing your client base or increasing your email list.

Luckily, marketing can help on all those fronts!

Data from Nielsen shows that marketing makes up 10%-35% of a brand’s total equity – so while a looming recession might have you considering cutting marketing costs, that move could actually hurt your bottom line.

Your firm can offer the best client experience, but if no one knows about you, you’re unlikely to make much headway. Marketing gets the word out about your firm to prospects and grows your client base.

While most firms know they need some form of marketing, they’re unsure of where to get started. They don’t want to overinvest in content and end up with a low ROI, but they also need to establish themselves in the industry.

This year is set to be a rocky one financially for many Americans – so it’s an opportune time to put your firm’s services on their radar. Let’s explore how you can do just that, beginning with defining your firm’s marketing needs in the new year.

Click here to watch the webinar “The 20 Most Common Marketing Problems Advisors Face (and How to Solve Them)”

5 Steps for Advisors to Define Their Marketing Needs for 2023

Ready to feel confident in your marketing team? Use these five prompts to define your marketing needs in the new year and begin assembling your key players.

1. Define your goals

A good goal is a specific goal. Even more importantly, it’s a SMART goal: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely.

For example, if your goal is to drive up website traffic, SMART goals can help you flesh that out a bit more:

• Why do you want to drive up website traffic?

• Is it to gain more prospects or to create better name recognition?

• What’s your current website traffic? Where would you like it to be and in what time frame?

• Is that attainable for your team? What impact will meeting this goal have on your firm?

It’s also a good idea to consult with other key players on your team to generate more ideas for your content and marketing goals for 2023.

2. Set a budget

Even though marketing is a major driving force for identifying prospects and gaining new clients, it’s often seen as an expendable part of budgets.

We’re not saying you should spend all your cash on a flashy billboard in Times Square, but you should decide on a number at the beginning or the year as your marketing budget. A great rule of thumb to follow is 2-5% of your firm’s revenue.

However, your exact number should incorporate several factors, such as:

• Your growth goals

• Competitor spending

• Cost for marketing services/professionals in your geographic area

It’s worth your time to research the services you’re specifically interested in and the associated costs. For example, sending a weekly email newsletter might seem like it would be free, but even that cost can add up.

Email marketing platforms often include design tools, customer data collection and analysis, automated workflows, landing page capabilities and other perks. (We currently have a love/hate relationship with ConvertKit, which bills based on your amount of monthly subscribers and features you’d like).

3. Determine Your Level of Involvement

Think about the amount of time you’ll be able to contribute to your marketing plan. If you want to have personalized blogs that include details about your firm’s inner workings, you or someone on your team will have to be involved to some extent.

On the flip side, a third-party marketing agency could handle creating generic thought-leadership content for your site, with little to no work on your part.

Think about your daily tasks and whether you have time to contribute to your firm’s marketing. If you do have the time, consider whether or not it’s something you would enjoy tacking on to your other duties, or if your marketing would be better off in someone else’s hands.

4. Create an Execution plan

We could write pages upon pages about content marketing execution (and we have). But if we had to narrow it down to the basics, there are three key factors you’ll need to consider:

1. Who will create your content?

2. What resources will they need?

3. What’s your time frame, and how will you meet it?

With these three elements answered, you can begin creating an actionable plan for your marketing needs.

5. assemble your all-star marketing team

Picture this: someone wrote a timely blog for your firm’s website about the repercussions of failing to file your taxes by April 15, which is just around the corner. While the content is great, you’re not so sure about the grammar – are you okay with waiting to publish the article until your marketing agency has a chance to review it, or would you rather have an in-house team member able to make the updates right away?

When you create social media images for your firm, are you okay with standard-style templates, or would you prefer fully-customized and professionally designed images?

Think about how you and the other key members of your firm would like to interact with your marketing team. Do you imagine adding more employees to your roster, or forming a partnership with an already-established agency?

Keep in mind that you’re not limited to working with agencies in your geographical area. With remote-first tech nearly universal, you can have a productive partnership with whatever marketing agency best fits your needs, even if they’re on the other side of the country.

Meet Your Marketing Needs with Three Crowns

Follow the 3C blog or contact a member of our team today to learn more about how we can be the marketing partner to help you reach your goals in 2023 and beyond.