Wouldn’t it be nice to know that day or night, rain or shine, your brand is consistently in front of your clients, prospects and centers of influence?
Would you like to feel confident that your marketing efforts are constantly working for you to develop relationships, deepen your trusted reputation and create a sales pipeline?
As a retirement plan advisor, you have a multitude of responsibilities—from business owner, to keeping up with compliance, to investment oversight, to plan design consulting.
You’re also the chief marketing officer.
As an entrepreneur, you oversee the growth of your business and the onboarding of new retirement plan clients.
Yes, it takes time and effort for your firm to achieve notable brand awareness. However, we’re in a digital marketing age that offers lovely shortcuts. With a strong marketing plan, valuable content and technology integration, you can remove the guesswork and better allocate your time.
Prerequisites
Keep in mind that one prerequisite for a dynamic digital campaign is, of course, a quality website. You’re a modern, professional business owner and you probably have a great online presence, but think of your website as your No. 1 salesperson. It’s sometimes in front of hundreds of people per day.
The next time you’re thinking about investing in a website update, think about how much it would cost to pay a top salesman to meet with hundreds of prospects.
Thankfully, most websites don’t cost as much as an annual salary, but it’s a different way to think about your marketing investment and how you should allocate your marketing budget.
Does your site convey your value proposition and how does it represent your brand? Does it encourage your prospects to act and is it optimized with automated features that work for you?
Another essential ingredient is its content.
What information are you sharing with prospects, clients and centers of influence? Are you producing original material, or do you subscribe to a creative suite of content?
Quality content such as articles, newsletters, infographics and videos allow you to consistently share useful information that educates and builds your reputation as a trusted source.
Once you have the basics taken care of, it is time to turn up the marketing volume.
Getting analytical
How are people engaging with your website? To help you view the digital path that your site visitors take on your website, we recommend using Google Analytics.
The analytics dashboard will give you valuable information like how many people have visited your site, how long they clicked around, and which pages were viewed. These metrics can provide helpful insight when setting goals and developing campaigns.
For example: you want to increase the number of site visitors, try an email campaign or social media promotion that directs visitors to your website.
Call to action plus automation
Who visits your website, and how are you staying in contact with them? Analytics tell you a ton of great data about your site visitors but don’t quite relay everything; sometimes you have to ask. A great way of collecting contact information from visitors is to offer them something of value.
Let’s say your website has a call to action, such as “Subscribe to our newsletter,” and your site visitor enters their email information.
What happens next can go one of two ways. You could get a notification saying you have a new subscriber, subsequently handcraft a personal message and then enter the information into your CRM manually.
Or, better yet, if you have a marketing automation system in place, that person will automatically receive a friendly “Thank you for subscribing” email, be automatically added to your CRM and instantly plugged into an appropriate email list.
Automation allows you to sit back and watch your contact list (or pipeline) grow over time as more and more people visit your site and subscribe to your content marketing.
Restful winks
When your marketing efforts leave your hands (or outboxes), they take on a natural lifecycle. Some pieces will be quick posts of fleeting popularity, while others will stand the test of time.
A great marketing campaign should consistently share valuable content, leverage technology and encourage automation.
By organizing your marketing campaign and thinking through the prospect’s experience, you can be in front of them every step of the way—whether at 2:00 in the afternoon or 2:00 in the morning, because a quality marketing campaign never sleeps.
At 401(k) Marketing, we believe the retirement plan industry can do better. Our clients are the best professional retirement plan advisors and TPAs in the business. They care deeply about saving America’s retirement future. We are proud to share their voice through industry writings, professionally-designed marketing materials (including websites) and expert content collateral. We support in promoting their businesses through on-going awareness campaigns. 401k Marketing is based in San Diego, CA. Check us out at www.401k-marketing.com.
Rebecca Hourihan is Chief Marketing Officer with San Diego-based 401(k) Marketing, a modern marketing agency for the retirement plan industry. The company supports clients through custom engagements, content marketing campaigns, sales material innovations, thought-leadership consulting, interactive workshops and speaking events. Its mission is to empower the retirement plan industry with high-quality marketing, ultimately inspiring Americans to become financially prepared for their future. Rebecca also hosts The 401(k) Marketing Podcast.
