Sheri Fitts is blunt about the mistakes 401(k) financial advisors make, and like most marketing mavens, she says it has to do with their brand—but not it a way one would think.
“Almost every other industry has rightly said, ‘I don’t want to be a commodity,’ so they shifted the way they buy and sell,” Fitts, president of ShoeFitts Marketing, argues. “Advisors have not.”
After presenting the executives in attendance at the GRP Advisor Alliance 2016 Industry Leaders Conference recently in Haines, Alaska with colorful, comfortable socks (in keeping with the “shoe fits” theme), the Portland, Oregon-based marketing expert and speaker described what can be done.
“I can do a 1031 swap online in my pajamas,” the author of Deconstructing Digital: Simple Ways to Connect with Your Next-Generation Financial Clients and 100 Social Media Success Tips, explains. “It’s just not the same with advisory services. When I look at advisors, they have not changed the way they sell.”
Pointing to Al Gore’s “invention of the Internet” in 1995, she says it’s been a decades-long stagnation in the evolution of advisor marketing.
“I’ll note advisors have changed the way they buy, as we all have, especially with the advent of online retail and distribution options, but they have not changed how they sell.”
The solution has to do with their aforementioned brand, something Fitts says they usually think of once, when they name the company and develop a logo, and that’s it.
“They don’t think of their brand as a competitive advantage, but that’s exactly what it is. We call it ‘your brand, your business, your bottom line.'”
Noting the advisor’s brand is a client-service strategy, she concludes, “The best way to fight commoditization is with superior client service. Starbucks does it, Zappos does it, good hotels do it, and really smart advisory firms are doing it.”
With more than 20 years serving financial markets, John Sullivan is the former editor-in-chief of Investment Advisor magazine and retirement editor of ThinkAdvisor.com. Sullivan is also the former editor of Boomer Market Advisor and Bank Advisor magazines, and has a background in the insurance and investment industries in addition to his journalism roots.
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