How do I grow my business with Covisum?

So many advisors know that marketing is valuable. But when it comes to HOW to do it and WHAT will be most effective, the landscape can get pretty confusing. Keep reading for some actionable ideas that you can put to work right away.

Covisum creates the software and support financial advisors need in order to provide better answers for retirees and pre-retirees.

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Think about this for a moment. Are you the type of advisor who wants to get “as many clients as possible?”

Or are you the type who wants to only attract and retain “the right clients?” If you’re the former, I’d like to try to persuade you to become the latter. It’s actually easier to market to the right prospective clients than to try to market to everyone.

It is important to any business to attract prospects, convert them into clients, and retain them year after year. Even better, delight your clients in such a way that they refer to you.

How do we get there?

Five easy things you can do right now:

  1. Set a marketing goal
  2. Identify your favorite client
  3. Create your value statement
  4. Send a compelling email
  5. Schedule an informational seminar

Arguably, the hardest thing for most financial advisors is not just learning their craft, but rather generating leads and finding new prospective clients to get in front of in the first place. Some common mistakes people make when creating their marketing goals include:

  • Having no marketing strategy at all
  • Relying on tactics instead of strategies
  • Using the same strategies as their competition
  • Not aligning the marketing strategy with the business strategy
  • Not making it SMART: strategic, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound

1. Set a Marketing Goal

I’ve found that the best way to write marketing goals is to base them off of business goals. Consider the following:

  • Where do you want to see your business at the end of the year... In three or five years...?
  • What does success look like?
  • If you can articulate that, you can write a business goal. Start there. Write down where you’d like your business to be in 1, 3, or 5 years.
  • Now, take a look at what you’ve written. Revise it until it is clearly defined –and SMART.

These Are NOT Goals

  • Launch a social media marketing campaign.
  • Speak at # of seminars/host # of webinars.
  • Update and maintain a LinkedIn presence.
  • Purchase paid promotion.
  • Join specific networking groups.
These are tactics. A tactic is a tool you use to achieve your objectives.

If you’re thinking about marketing goals from this vantage point, you’re going to miss the mark. These are tactics.

We’ll get to tactics when we get to the harder stuff. For now, all you need is a goal. DO NOT mistake a goal for a tactic. Executing on tactics without tying it to a larger strategy is an exhausting and ineffective way to make money. Just because you see or hear of a competitor or someone else doing something, does not mean it’s the right thing for your business. That’s why tactics show up in the harder section.

2. Identify Your Favorite Client

Who are your favorite clients? Write down their names. Make a list. What do you like about them? What part of your practice do they utilize? Why are they your favorite? Can you segment them into client types or are they all similar?

Write five sentences that describe them:

  1. Challenges
  2. Interests
  3. Where they get their information
  4. How they make decisions
  5. Anything else you know about them

Now that you’ve identified a little bit about them, you can put yourself in their shoes. Do this every time you make a decision about your business. Thinking of hypothetical clients in this way will help you narrow your target and build your business stronger and faster.

3. Create Your Value Statement

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I swear to you, this is how most companies’ sound, right? When you hear some of what people have to offer, you really can’t tell what makes them unique. It’s usually because no one spent the time to really dig in and think about it.

How do you get started? Take what you discovered from your exercise pretending to be your favorite client and make a list of how you can uniquely add value for them. Why do they like you? Why are they using your services? What would they tell their friends about you when you aren’t listening? What made them pick you over another advisor?

Whatever you do, don’t let your value statement sound like this!

Now that you’ve identified your favorite client, it’s time to pretend you are them. Honestly, when I do this, I actually close my eyes for a minute and “get into character.” I think about myself in a setting that my target would be in. I pretend to BE my audience.

As you are pretending to be your favorite client, answer these questions – in their voice, in their tone, the way they would answer if you weren’t in the room:

  • How does my advisor improve my life? 
  • Does she help me make my retirement dreams come true?
  • Does she help me see what my retirement could look like?
  • Does she take something complicated and make it easy for me?

Why do I trust my advisor?

  • Yes, she has experience, but what else? Does he “get” me?
  • Is it important to her to help me achieve my goals?
  • Does she provide easy-to-understand communication and reports that help me see the value she adds to my retirement strategy?
  • How did I learn about her? Was it from a friend? Or another trusted source?

This exercise might take some time, but it’s worth it.

4. Improve Your Email Game

We are all inundated with email. How do you make your emails stand out? Make sure to personalize your emails – you can start by simply addressing your contacts by name, but if you want to up your game even more, find a way to include something even more personal in the body of the email. You could recap a conversation you had or reference something you you know they have interest in.

If your list is too large to customize each email, segment them as much as possible. For example, pre-retirees, new retirees, and long-time retirees. Your services and advice might differ a bit for each segment, so customize your email to reflect that and send a different version to each segment.

Make sure to include a call to action and follow up with helpful and relevant content until it’s acceptable to ask for a meeting.  Check out this article for tips on mastering email marketing.

5. Schedule an Informational Seminar or Webinar

Hosting seminars and webinars allows you to showcase specialized expertise and establish credibility to an audience who wants to hear your advice. Hosting educational seminars and webinars gives you the ability to provide meaningful insight to attendees, establish new connections and open up doors to new client opportunities. Following the seminar, you can transform leads into clients by delivering on the promises made during your presentation.

To make these even easier, every paid subscription to a Covisum software solution comes with a license to use our field-tested presentation materials. These were created by our founder and president – a practicing financial advisor. He uses them in his own practice.

Your educational seminar or webinar should convey expertise, establish credibility and help build relationships by simplifying complex ideas into something your favorite clients can understand. This is NOT a sales pitch.

We offer tons of free support for advisors who conduct seminars. Many of our advisors use educational seminars to attract new clients. Here's a few articles to get you started:

Covisum's Field-Tested Presentations for Advisors

When you subscribe to any one – or more than one – of our software solutions, we will train you on how to use the software and run reports. Access to our live expert support team is included with your subscription. Our support team can help you with case questions as well as coach you on how to communicate your value based on the reports.

But that's not all. With your paid subscription, we provide a field-tested presentation specific to the content in the software – you get a different presentation with each software subscription. These presentations position you as the expert that your community needs and help you differentiate your practice.

Marketing Your Expertise & Events

We also provide several free resources specific to marketing your financial practice online, including:

Grow Your Knowledge and Experience with Live and On-Demand Webinars

Provide more to your existing clients when you learn how to transition them from one aspect of financial planning to a comprehensive strategy. Right now, the topic of taxes is top of mind for consumers. Learn how to leverage technology to benefit your existing business, helping your clients add value to their bottom line. Covisum produces numerous free, educational webinars, including:

Receive Free, Ongoing Support

Think of our support team as an extension of your team. After you take a trial or purchase, if you have questions about the software or reports, our expert support team is available Monday - Thursday from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Friday 7:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Central Time at 877.844.7213 or via email at help@covisum.com. You also have 24-hour access to our knowledge base.

Get Started!

  1. Start with a free trial to see the power of the software and generate actionable reports.
  2. Purchase full subscriptions to access the presentations and client-facing marketing materials.
  3. Begin marketing your practice and growing your business!

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