The importance of branding for financial advisors is mostly important to the people who sell branding items – brochures, postcards, newsletters etc. Unless you are already one of the top 10% of producers in your community and you want to move beyond your 10% market share, branding won’t help you so don’t worry about it. Of much greater importance than branding is having superior direct response marketing. Financial advisor marketing often turns to issues of less-than- paramount importance (e.g. branding) to the sacrifice of the important (generating leads).
Branding is oft spoken about because it is important to larger organizations. Bank of America needs to have good branding. Cisco needs to have good branding. John A. Smith financial advisor or Ben Proctor, Insurance Agent, doesn’t need to have good branding. What John A. Smith and Ben Proctor need are an awesomely successful and productive lead generation/direct response system so that these professionals talking to plenty of prospects and get plenty of new clients. If you already have 10% of the available clients in your town, then you need to turn your attention to your branding and building an image. However, my bet is you don’t even have one percent of the financial services business in your town. Therefore focus on getting clients, not getting an image.
The problem with branding is you cannot control the result, it is a long-term process and the cause and effect is hard to measure. You may not see a payoff for years. Direct response marketing on the other hand will provide results this week. If you mail 1000 postcards and get 12 responses, you know what you have. You can calculate the ROI, your can make adjustments and tweak your mailings to success. Would you rather have a new client in 10 days or potentially, maybe many new clients in two years? My guess is you’re interested in more immediate results and branding is not the key to get there. That’s not to say branding is bad, it just costs money and takes time thereby taking resources away from the far more important direct response marketing. Money put into any of the following will produce far faster and far more identifiable results:
Direct mail
Seminars
Internet marketing (pay per click marketing)
Newspaper advertising
Radio advertising
TV advertising
All of the above must be used in a way that is not oriented toward building your image or building your name but rather getting people to respond i.e. pick up the phone, send back a card, attend a seminar or do something so that they take a step toward you to become your next client. If you do your direct response marketing actively and effectively, then in a couple years we can talk about how to do branding well.
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Tags: financial advisor branding, financial advisor marketing, financial branding
If we can’t you control the result of branding then how can we know if our branding is efective for our product?
Would you rather have a new client in 10 days or potentially, maybe many new clients in two years?- this is definitely a very good question to answer when it comes to brand management. Lot of marketing strategist nowadays usually used social media and blogs to add to their marketing strategies but surely the ones you’ve mentioned are the perfect choices. Very good posts, I’m sure young learners like us will gather fresh ideas from your posts.
TV advertising can elucidate responses, but you need the initial capital to pay for it, I’ve found Newspaper advertising to be effective.
I agree that it is, for the most part, “a long term process”. Hard work, and then more Hard Work, ad infinitum!
Brands are most influential when customers lack the knowledge to make informed product choices, or in
commoditized categories such as financial services. They take on even greater significance when the
purchase decision is of great importance to the customer and the customer is faced with a plethora of
complex choices. Fierce competition ensures that there is little sustainable product differentiation in
product features or price. However, the products and services offered revolve around something that is
very important to customers: their money and financial security.
Interesting article. I have tried using internet marketing for my pressure washing company here in Jacksonville, FL. I have found that google adwords was a lot more effective than the ads on facebook.
Financial advisors is the most useful person of business field. Thanks for advise this term.
Great article…but most of what is written holds true for any kind of branding…not just for Financial Advisers. Is there an argument specific to branding of financial advisers?
it just costs money and takes time thereby taking resources away from the far more important direct response marketing. Money put into any of the following will produce far faster and far more identifiable results:
If you do your direct response marketing actively and effectively, then in a couple years we can talk about how to do branding well.
Direct responding, i feel, should be established long before direct branding is even considered. What good is the long term if theres no short game?
it also depends on how you work out with branding. sometimes people just tend to use branding for the sake that they need to brand, but does not understand how branding affects one product or company in the long run.
You’re right about branding in general, but internet brading is something different. Even if you don’t care about branding, you still need to make a website that presents you in a way that attracts people.
The effect of a good website is still hard to measure, but for sure potential customers will check your website and make a decision based on how professional it is.
So remember to put *some* effort into branding, even if it’s just internet branding or a website.
This is very true. Branding is good. But this is a long-term endeavor. Branding enhances image or reputation but direct response marketing brings more speedy results. Though I believe both are essential to any business, the latter possesses the capability to generate profit faster than the first.
As a finance major I found this post interesting as marketing/advertising fundamentals are often ignored when it comes to finance. People become too focused on numbers and forget about attracting customers to their services in the first place.
I think that you need to be focused all the time, when its about having your online business made on real professional parameters. Branding its a very complex word, and you can do many things, trough this method.
I think that the importance of branding to financial advisers is much more than simply to benefit those who sell branding items. Firstly, the people who rise to the top have to get there somehow, and need to create a “brand” to get there. Also, branding helps potential customers differentiate between FA’s. For example, if someone wanted a conservative FA they would be more likely to just choose someone who has branded himself that way.
Great point for all businesses. Most smaller, local businesses spend so much money on creating a cohesive brand, spending thousands on logo design, website design, etc before they get any sort of business. It’s important to spend on the important things, like lead generation and customer service and then worry about branding when your business is ready to take that next step. Just my two cents
As consumers, we don’t really think about the importance of branding. We just seem to go with the flow of brand names that have become synonymous with our daily living. But the impact of a name reinforces the importance of branding when we promote our business
Branding for a financial advisor is necessarily linked to direct marketing. Advertising should be used in place do not necessarily have to retain the name but we go there. Very good article.
Branding will always make people believe that they are standardized and by that they get recognition easily. I completely agree with the article shared here.
Branding is good to establish an identity. It is a subtle and often psychological way to attract people. In contrast, direct response marketing is a bolder effort to elicit faster response from targeted people. There is an enormous difference and often times, direct response marketing gives the best result.
good post…i have found that branding is irrelevant unless you have a good product. no one cares about your name if your product stinks
I see how branding in this field could erect problems but I’ve seen other methods advisors use and branding is one of the more ethical ways to give yourself a name. You give great advice
Branding is an ethical way to give yourself a good name in the advisor field, your advice is great as always.
name branding is important issue. Often mistaken that it has no meaning in internet business, that SEO is more important.
But especially these days, when search engines change and improve algorithms almost daily, name branding is more important than ever.
If you are in travel business as our company, offering apartments in Croatia, reliable name among customers is everything. Never the less, beside on name, it is still needed to work on search engine optimization and web page “friendliness”. You just have to, since competition forces you to do it.
Direct mail is a king of today marketing and second you still need to make a website that presents you, like moneypoint said already.
When you have a large business a good brand is absolutely necesary. But if you own a small shop you could live without a brand
Direct response marketing is getting results more fast than the branding itself. If you are good enough people will share your brand and things will go better and better for you
I agree with your post completely, but I think that there is a place for both short and long term strategy. It never hurts to build up your brand recognition while making current sales. Hopefully the two will go hand in hand. But since we do have to eat, I understand the desire to earn immediately.
The effect of a good website is still hard to measure, but for sure potential customers will check your website and make a decision based on how professional it is.
So remember to put *some* effort into branding, even if it’s just internet branding or a website.
A good financial advisor will give tips for the benefit of the investor. This will help us gain more confidence in investing money. I believe a house is not a dead investment. This is a good investment especially in big cities. I would rather stay in a house than just in a room. I am comfortable with a house.
I think branding is the most important item. Working for a financial firm i get this first hand. It took me years to actually figure this out.
For faster branding one need action that is not necessary connected with its product or business but it will get instant and large public attention. Binding brand with something else in the beginning can get you to faster start and results.
Branding is important. Internet branding is a little bit different than other ways. But it’s very mesurable. This is one of the greatest features of the internet. We can mesure the conversion in easy way.
Branding for financial advisors – as the article talks about, you would be much smarter if you focus on things that you can more easily control and get faster results with. Direct response marketing is certainly the number 1 thing to study and implement. In the financial advisor industry the only thing to be careful with is compliance! Many firms have very strict compliance with what you can and can not do with your marketing so make sure you play ball but implement as much direct response marketing as possible!
“Unless you are already one of the top 10% of producers in your community”. I agree, most of the professionals and companies are SMEs and so direct response is more important than branding.
Branding is very important for financial advisers because it gives you credibility. The key to successful marketing is having credibility because no one wants to risk money with no previous results.
I disagree that “branding won’t help.” Every time you touch people, you are doing so with a brand. Direct mail and newletters all carry your brand outward to the world. Branding is inescapable.
I think what you mean is that spending a lot of money on having a prestigious-looking custom logo or hiring an expensive design firm involved may be overkill. That I would agree with. Uniqueness is oversold in many marketing spiels. Professional and consistent is enough in most cases.
Branding is important. Internet branding is a little bit different than other ways. But it’s very mesurable. This is one of the greatest features of the internet.
Thanks for sharing the post. No doubt branding is very important whether its a offline or online branding. Keep up the good work.
Does Pay per Click advertising still good? since I found in some forum people are trying to have something like “thank you click” or even “click my link I click yours” so how will the customer will come?
Branding is an important part of your business and at some stage it becomes compulsory for your business if you want to take your business to next level. I think that offline branding is a little bit difficult and expensive thing for small businesses and it is even nit much useful if your targeted clients are spread over in the whole world. I think online branding is always a good option.
Branding for Financial Advisors Fahgettaboudit The importance of branding for financial advisors is mostly important to the people who sell …
Great points, especially for smaller businesses where short term profits are necessary to keep their businesses open require. The thing is, if you have a great product and do enough of the direct mail or pay per click campaigns (as an example), your product may eventually, ‘brand itself’.
I definitely agree that branding is on of the most important aspect any merchant or business associates must have. It gives identity and creates a differentiation between products that are of similar type. Good post.
I appreciate you sharing the importance of branding for financial advisers, it is helpful.
I would think that you would be better served to spend a good amount of your marketing budget to brand yourself as a successful financial advisor. When people are trusting you to handle their money, they want to know that they are going with someone that they can trust.
For me branding is irrelevant unless you have a good product. no one cares about your name if they cannot find your products. The effect of a good website is still hard to measure.
hello,
As I have read the post above, I was really thinking that having an investment advisor is really necessary especially when having your business. I just wanna thank you guys for having posting this one.
Definitely in short time, You cannot measure the ROI of a product for which you have done marketing. Its span is more longer than other and then definitely benefits are also longer than others. But if you want quick response on that then spend more time and money and place more quality also then probably it will give more early results.
The more they promote their branding, the more they will charge their customers.