Over the past few years, many BDs, Insurance companies, and large RIAs have segmented their marketing team into two departments: corporate marketing and advisor marketing. These companies know that helping the advisor market themselves and their services plays a large part in attracting new business and increasing AUM.
With the model of advisor marketing services woven into the company’s culture, having a suite of marketing tools readily available and a team that supports them is attractive to advisors looking to transition. Often, advisor marketing is part of the package when an advisor transitions to their company.
“It’s not uncommon for advisors to be offered a website, access to pre-approved content, and other marketing services such as social media management. Companies that offer these ‘marketing perks’ and access to their marketing team want their advisors to focus on what they do best- building relationships and managing wealth, not marketing,” says Teresa Leno, Chief Operating Officer of Fresh Finance.
The advisor marketing services may be offered free to the advisor or at a greatly reduced cost. The specialized marketing team handles almost everything an advisor may need to market their business:
- Graphic design services
- Content writing
- Video production
- Website maintenance
- Social media management
- Event planning
One size may not fit all
Over the years, ‘independence’ has become a hot word in the industry, and it also fits when it comes to advisor marketing. Advisors want the independence to choose their website’s provider, whether it is an out-of-the-box solution through a vendor or designed by a family member. But how can a company address pre-approved content for the multiple websites its advisors have? It’s simple, says Leno;
“Advisor marketing teams can manage a centralized library of pre-approved content and images and third-party content that their advisors can access regardless of their website providers. While some website providers offer content, it’s not always pre-approved and is distributed across thousands of advisor websites.
Our Fresh Finance MarTech solution solves these problems; the advisor marketing team can create proprietary content or use ours and edit articles to make them their own, then send the pre-approved content through our API into their advisors’ portals to access and use on their website’s blog and social media.”
Some advisors also want to create content around a specific topic. If the advisor isn’t a writer themselves, this is where an advisor marketing team can help. The team’s content writer or an outside vendor can act as a ghostwriter for the advisor.
Selecting marketing tools
Advisor marketing teams generally rely on multiple MarTech tools to create and provide their services. But the tools are often disconnected, making delivering marketing services cumbersome for the marketing team and advisors. Like in WealthTech, marketing tools must have integrations or the ability to integrate with other tools. When selecting marketing tools, advisor marketing departments should consider integrations such as:
- CRM
- Social Media
- Third-party content
“When selecting a MarTech tool, the marketing team must consider how the tool will integrate with other tools and if the vendor is willing to add integrations through APIs. APIs are becoming increasingly more important in marketing technology as companies build out their advisor marketing technology hubs,” adds Leno.
