The £2,000 Marketing Plan
I often read Marketing Wire – an excellent blog about marketing for financial adviser firms in the USA. Kirsten Luke, the woman behind Marketing Wire has done a lot of work on simple marketing approaches for American advisers. She reckons they can put together a great marketing programme for only $3,000 a year! So can you in the UK – for £2,000. Here is a UK version of that approach for our market.
Marketing Plan
It is more important than ever to market your business. However, your dilemma is that revenue is down, so you don’t have much money to spend on marketing. Don’t worry! There are many low cost options that can still have great impact on your business. For all of you out there looking for an effective strategy that requires very little money, you can develop a great marketing plan for as little as £2,000. Read on to see what you can do to grow your business for just over £150 per month.
Webinars – £792
If you haven’t integrated webinars into your marketing plan yet, this is the year to do so! For as little as £66 ($99) per month using GoToWebinar.com, you can conduct as many webinars as you wish. You can use this service from the UK. This strategy can help you reach hundreds of people all at once. Start a monthly webinar series for your clients and prospects. Remind your clients to forward the invitation to their friends and family members. If you want to reach a larger audience, list your webinar on free calendar of events websites and social networking sites like LinkedIn. Conduct webinars for your professional connections and introducers as well and consider inviting outside panelists to present with you. Invite professional connections to become panelists for your client webinars and extend the invitation to their clients as well. You can further the reach of your webinars if you record the session and post them to your website or email them to people who couldn’t make the event. As you can see, a couple hours of work and around £66 each month can make a big difference in your marketing.
Email Marketing – £120
If you are still using print newsletters, it’s time to upgrade to electronic newsletters. Not only are print newsletters not environmentally friendly, they are expensive. For as little as £10 per month, you can subscribe to a good email marketing service to reach your clients, prospects and COIs via email. The monthly fee allows you to send marketing emails to your list (up to 500 contacts) an unlimited number of times. This means you can send as many weekly market wraps, quarterly newsletters, invitations to special events and client surveys as you want for only $180 per year. To best utilize email marketing, continue to build your list of clients, prospects and professional connections and send relevant information pertinent to each group. There are dozens of different ways to reach out to people through email marketing. All you have to do is be creative!
Networking Events – £792
People either love or hate networking events. To continually build your list of prospects and professional connections, you should regularly be collecting cards at events and adding them to your email and webinar campaigns. For purposes of the £2,000 budget, you should probably be attending two events per month at an average cost of £66 per month. If you can go to more, great! Just remember to collect contact information and get the people you meet on the two ‘drip’ campaigns mentioned above.
In-Office Round Table Discussions – £200
Twice a year, hold an economic round table discussion in your office. Invite other advisers who have varying perspectives on the economy such as local bankers, solicitors, accountants and commercial estate and property agents or property developers to name a few. Alternatively you could invite good spokespeople from one of the investment houses or life offices. Invite a select group of people (prospects, clients, professional connections) so that the event feels exclusive. The event should be held in the evening hours with wine and cheese served. For 25 people, you can get away with 12 bottles of wine at £5 each and a £40 cheese and fruit platter from your local deli or supermarket deli counter. That comes out to approximately £100 for each event. Such a deal for such a great relationship building event!
Cards – £100
Good old fashioned note and greeting cards go a long way. At a minimum, you should be sending holiday cards to all of your clients. You should also send thank you cards to clients who provide you with a referral and greeting cards on special occasions. Include a hand written note and your gesture will go a long with your clients and your word of mouth marketing.
The marketing plan described gives you a lot of flexibility and most likely provides you with enough activity to last you the entire year. The total cost of this plan? £2,004! With this budget, here is what you can accomplish in just one year:
- 52 weekly market wrap emails
- 4 quarterly email newsletters
- 12 client/prospect webinars
- 12 professional connection webinars
- 2 round table discussions
The most successful firms will tell you that it is in economic times like these that their business grows the most. Why? Because they focus on marketing when other firms do not. As we move into the second half of a challenging year, make sure you don’t neglect your marketing. Take advantage of the low cost marketing options available to you and watch your business thrive!
Kristen Luke is the Principal of Wealth Management Marketing, a consulting firm specialising in marketing solutions for independent financial advisors. Read her blog on http://www.wealthmanagementmarketing.net/ for more information.
