Why Financial Planners Must Have a Client Newsletter

In case you want to be considered as a financial specialist (or any kind of expert), you best present tips to your clients and prospects that they don’t know. Being a source of knowledge is the number one method to gain trustworthiness through appearing educated. It’s not that you need to know a thing that everyone else does not. Since you study journals that the general public does not read (or you better be if you are really a professional), you know about issues two or three months ahead of the same topics appear in your daily newspapers. These would be the kinds of matters that ought to be within your financial planner e-newsletter.

In case you want testimonials, your customers need to trust you. Believe this or not, a few clients have completed business with you however do not have 100% confience in you. In order to build that confidence in towards the hundred percent level, you need a regular flow of interaction that will increases your credibility. A monthly financial advisor newsletter can do just that. Your clients will certainly recognize that you’re really as smart as they thought you might be.

Why don’t you consider dozens of prospects you’ve talked to as well as met face to face, those who never bought anything at all? Do you think that they will all of a sudden think about you, find your business card as well as contact you the moment they have got cash in their pants pocket? Improbable. (Do they still have your business card)? The person who will more than likely win their business is the one who is in front of their face around the very same time they have a desire to act. You might be that individual should you provide your newsletter each and every 30 days because you will then have their “share of mind.”

Are you sure your visitors know every one of the products and services you are offering? Ask and you will be surprised. In reality, your customers may currently order products and services that you offer from oters simply because they don’t know you are offering these things. In your own publication, you are able to expose these products and also services you know about and provide by providing informative and never product sales oriented articles. Obviously, in a very good newsletter, the end of each post will make an offer which urges your reader to action without setting up a sales pitch.

It is said that in matters of love, absence makes the heart grow fonder. In business, it’s just the opposite. In your absence, clients forget about you. If you want people to recommend you and bring their new business to you, you have got to maintain ongoing contact and a simple method of doing that is using the silent salesman called your own month-to-month e-newsletter.

What Financial Advisors Need to do Differently Now

In 12 months, the world has changed.  If you don’t make radical changes in the way you do business, you will experience professional death.  Like the dinosaurs that got wiped out in months from a meteor striking earth, this economic meteor will also make you a dinosaur.  Future posts (and posts on related blogs) will detail specific actions you can take to capitalize on this new world.  For today, let’s start with some general direct marketing concepts:

1. You cannot continue to do the same things you have done and have them work when the environment has changed

2. In order to know what is on your prospect’s mind, you cannot guess.  Most advisors THINK they know what’s important to clients and potential clients, but they don’t.  You need to have a focus group with your clients (or prospects) and ask them.  More specifics on this in a future post.

3. You must design your marketing, your communications, everything about your financial advisory practice around what’s important to your clients/prospects.  As an example, if you serve seniors, have your office on the first floor or make sure you’re in an elevator building.  Have your office in the suburbs where they live because retirees don’t go downtown.  Wear a suit because older people expect a certain degree of formality with business matters.  Get the idea?  Cater everything about your business to your customer.

4. If you are currently not using the Internet and email in a big way in your business, you’re 75% of the way to dinosaur.  You need to have a web site (more on how to use it), you need to be emailing your clients, you need to be sending prospects your email newsletter (or better, print newsletter), and you need to be using pay per click advertising to draw new clients.  You may ask how you learn about these things.  Simple–everything I know about all of these things I learned on the INTERNET.   No one will come to teach you.

5. The is an age of self learning.  I often ask people to tell me the last book they read and they look at me with a blank stare.  if you are not a reader, an Internet explorer, you are 90% to dinosaur.  You simply won’t keep up with your competition or the public.  Once this group of seniors dies off and the baby boomers become the seniors, you are toast if you don’t stay ahead of the curve with your knowledge.  Baby boomers are smart, Internet savvy and you will need to immediately prove why they should do business with you.

Check the blog roll for our other blogs related to sales and marketing.