Marketing Intent: Utilizing All Marketing Platforms

May 30, 2023 | Marketing Intent

Have you seen that meme where it says, “You’re not my friend if I’m not tweeting you, Instagram messaging you and texting you all at the same time, but about different things?” 

LET’S DISCUSS HOW THIS CONCEPT CAN APPLY TO YOUR BUSINESS SUCCESSFULLY.

Using LinkedIn, Website and Emails Together

We often see asset managers create a report or a paper and just post it on their website for financial advisors to find. They think that’s enough to distribute their content and they don’t email it out as well. And if they do email it, they often don’t also promote the content on social. We know there are times you can’t share certain types of content on social, but when you can, you should.

Getting Information in Different Ways

All advisors you’re targeting are not reading their email, and all are not visiting your website. They are interacting with your firm in different ways, seeing different messaging and building their knowledge base about who you are and what you do.

So, make it easy for them. It’s very likely advisors aren’t seeking you out. You need to show up where your target audience is and demonstrate thought leadership. Educate them. Help them solve client problems. And don’t worry about repeating content. People need to see/read messages multiple times for them to sink in.

Getting more views of your content creates more interactions which drives conversations.

Take your content, repurpose it, put it out across all possible mediums – and help drive advisor engagement and capital raising.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO TALK MORE ABOUT HOW WE CAN HELP WITH YOUR CONTENT STRATEGY, REACH OUT TO US.

Marketing Intent: Marketing That Helps Bring Capital In The Door

May 15, 2023 | Marketing Intent

If you’re not doing marketing that’s helping bring capital in the door, why are you doing it?

THE REALITY IS THAT THERE’S A LOT OF MARKETING DONE IN OUR INDUSTRY THAT JUST DOES NOT SUPPORT THE SALES EFFORT.

Sales-Focused Marketing Strategy

Yes, we’re a marketing firm. And we appreciate all things marketing. But in the asset management and alternative investments world, we focus on marketing not just for the sake of marketing, but to help raise capital for your investment offerings.

For example, while we appreciate branding and the importance of it, it can be taken too far, which can take the focus off sales-focused marketing efforts. For example, instead of using effort to make sure an advisor lunch is well branded on site, consider instead putting resources into providing a solid marketing follow-up effort for the event, which will better support the sales team and the capital-raising effort.

Educate Advisors

Another key area that can help push capital raising is advisor education. Educating them on your asset class, your company, your management team and your offerings. Think about how you’re giving advisors updates and staying in front of them so they develop trust and faith in your firm. And how you’re providing the information they need so they understand your offering and can explain it to their clients. Make that easy and your sales team will have an advantage with advisors and establishing the type of relationships with them that lead to capital coming in the door.

Deciding Where to Focus

Thinking about where to focus your marketing can be overwhelming. As you’re prioritizing your list, evaluate each marketing project by what it does for your sales team. Does it help explain something better? Address a common advisor objection? Highlight what differentiates your firm? Explain the investor problem your firm’s investment solves?

If you’re looking at your project list and don’t know the answers to the above in relation to each piece, get the sales team involved. The marketing-sales feedback loop is critical in understanding which marketing efforts move the capital-raising dial. And remember, that marketing is iterative. You won’t always get it right the first time, but through collaboration with the sales team, you will consistently improve and make sure marketing contributes to bringing in capital.

AT MARKETING INTENT, WE HELP OUR CLIENTS FOCUS ON PRIORITIZING MARKETING THAT HELPS BRING CAPITAL IN THE DOOR. IF YOU NEED HELP DECIDING WHICH MARKETING PROJECTS TO FOCUS ON, WE WOULD BE HAPPY TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT IT.

Marketing Intent: The Power Of The Pivot

May 9, 2023 | Marketing Intent

Your fund just closed and you expected it to be open for six more months.

Your marketing plan is out the window.

So what do you do next?

THIS IS WHERE THE POWER OF THE PIVOT IN BUSINESS COMES INTO PLAY.

Changing Direction Quickly

In marketing, we love to create project plans, line up our content calendar, schedule campaigns and set everything in motion.

We have this ideal set out on how everything’s going to go. Your fund is launched, it’s live, your sales team is raising capital and your firm is planning on selling it until it reaches $X in capital or as of a certain date. But then your sales team raises capital faster than you expected.

All your marketing plans are out the window. What do you do next? The sales team doesn’t get time off until the next offering. And the next fund launch is likely months away.

This is where strategy comes into play. And your ability to change on demand. Especially in a volatile market. It’s important to prep yourself mentally and with strategy to quickly change direction. 

Develop Your Next Steps

First, bring the entire marketing team into what is happening and the pivot your firm and your team need to make. Sketch out the situation, which marketing programs are now obsolete, what advisors’ information needs will be around the business event that just occurred and what they will need to know going forward as you launch a new fund.

When you have a gap between funds, a great place to focus is on brand awareness. Just because your fund is closed, doesn’t mean your brand’s gone. Your sales team works hard to establish relationships with financial advisors…part of your job is to help them keep those relationships intact even if you don’t have a product in the market. Miss this as a marketer, and capital raising will be slow going at the start of your next offering as you try to make up for lost time in maintaining a presence in the minds of advisors.

For example, advisors are looking for education – on alternative investments, on your asset class, on lifestyle trends affecting commercial real estate. Focus on that between offerings. You can also distribute content from third parties and note how the information relates to your firm. And keep featuring your management team on webinars to provide advisors with updates or insights.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO DISCUSS HOW WE CAN HELP YOU PLAN FOR THE PIVOT, REACH OUT TO US TODAY.

Don’t Be Held Hostage By PowerPoint

April 26, 2023 | Marketing Intent

A client we recently worked with was frustrated with their PowerPoint presentations.

EVERY SLIDE WAS AN IMAGE CREATED BY A GRAPHIC DESIGNER APPEARING VERY POLISHED (AND VERY HARD TO UPDATE).

Problems with PowerPoint

We get it. You want your presentations to be on brand and look amazing. But that doesn’t make sense when you have regular updates to make – like that last minute change from the CEO before a webinar – and you’re frantically calling an outside designer for a revision because you can’t make it yourself.

Pasting in images instead of using native PowerPoint functionality takes away PowerPoint’s…well, power. PowerPoint is meant to be a support program to make your life easier and not hold you hostage and limit your flexibility and productivity. It’s meant for you to easily update presentations. And when set up correctly, it’s like a right-hand man that can make you far more efficient.

Maximizing PowerPoint’s Functionality

Learn about the functionality that is built into PowerPoint and utilize it. One of the amazing things about PowerPoint is the master slides function. Master slides allow you to apply your brand to the template, set fonts, heading styles, a color palette, spacing, bullet styles, etc. You can set up various types of slides as well, like a cover, a content slide and a diver slide. There are very detailed settings that can be created to help you maintain your branding.

Although, branding alone does not help you raise capital. Branding is important (obviously) but if a bullet’s off or a logo is placed a little bit too low on a page, it’s not going to affect an advisor’s ability to understand or bring capital in the door. It’s a balance between maintaining brand standards to a T and ensuring you’re positioning your firm in a way that allows you to develop and deliver clear messaging to advisors on your offering that generate sales conversations.

Making PowerPoint More Efficient

How do we make our clients’ PowerPoint presentations more efficient? We always start with the master slides. Behind the scenes, it sets the stage for more efficient work going forward and less management team disappointment in timeliness of updates. We call this “being kind to your future self” because you’ll be able to be nimbler with changes and more responsive to requests for changes from management and the sales team.

We design as many elements as possible in the native PowerPoint platform. These can be supplemented with designed graphics, but any element that may change frequently we suggest keeping in PowerPoint.

We also convert charts of data to native PowerPoint charts that are linked to Excel files…another big time saver and a play that helps non-designers be more self-sufficient in PowerPoint.

A lot of people dislike PowerPoint, but if you’re using it correctly, it’s actually a great tool. When you put the work in behind the scenes, it’s easier, it’s smoother, and it just works better to help support your marketing goals.

DO YOUR POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS NEED AN OVERHAUL? DO YOU NEED HELP MAKING THEM MORE USER FRIENDLY? WE WOULD LOVE TO WORK WITH YOU TO PROVIDE SUGGESTIONS ON HOW YOU CAN IMPROVE YOUR PRESENTATIONS AND IMPROVE YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH POWERPOINT. CONTACT THE MARKETING INTENT TEAM TODAY.

Marketing Intent Wins Gramercy Institute Award for Strategic Excellence in Financial Marketing

April 5, 2023 | Marketing Intent

Marketing Intent, a marketing firm specializing in alternative investments, announced that it achieved the honor of winning a Gramercy Institute Award for Strategic Excellence in Financial Marketing.

Gramercy Institute, an industry think-tank focused on the intellectual needs of senior marketers from the world’s major financial firms, established this award to recognize the critical role strategy plays in successful marketing campaigns in the financial services sector.

Marketing Intent won the award for the strategy it developed for the firm’s client, Gladstone Land Corporation, for a “Power of Agriculture” campaign. The campaign included a conceptual re-branding, content marketing, email marketing and video to explain the farmland asset class as an investment, along with marketing material for Gladstone Land’s preferred stock offering designed for financial advisors.

Cherie Fournier, Founder and CEO of Marketing Intent, said “It’s an honor for our team to be recognized by our colleagues and peers in the financial services industry. With Gladstone Land’s campaign, we set out to bring the agricultural asset class to life, explain its merits as an investment, raise brand awareness for Gladstone Land, drive advisor engagement, and ultimately help Gladstone Land raise capital for its offering. Through a strong partnership with our client and best-in-class work, we achieved that goal.”

Marketing Intent was founded by Fournier in 2020 to provide sales-focused marketing to the alternative investments industry after identifying an underserved niche. Fournier and VP, Client Success, Alise Lucero, have extensive marketing experience in financial services and alternative investments. They both previously held a Series 7 securities license – a rarity among financial services marketing teams. For more information about Marketing Intent, visit https://marketingintent.com/.

About Marketing Intent

Marketing Intent is a sales-focused marketing group specializing in alternative investments with a track record in marketing that helps drive sales. Marketing Intent is made up of a cohesive team of marketing professionals, copywriters, designers, developers, event planners and others who work on a wide range of financial services, alternative investments and commercial real estate projects. Marketing Intent creates marketing for asset manager clients to support their capital raising efforts, including marketing strategy, branding, sales enablement, content creation and distribution, websites, print and digital design, videos, brochures and other materials.

Contact

Angelique Stacy
Marketing Intent
Phone: 314-704-0285
Email: angelique@marketingintent.com

Marketing Intent: Participating And Planning

January 20, 2023 | Marketing Intent

HOW GREAT DOES IT FEEL TO BE ASKED TO PARTICIPATE IN A TASK FORCE TO PLAN AN INDUSTRY CONFERENCE?
PRETTY DARN GREAT.

Planning the Summit Conference

That’s how Cherie felt when Stacy Chitty from Blue Vault, asked her to participate in the task force to plan the upcoming Blue Vault Bowman Alts Summit 2023. This conference is focused on alternative investments.

We’ve been hearing for a long time that the 60/40 portfolio is no longer working. Alternative investments are the way to help the financial industry break out of that mold…although it’s been a bit slow moving to do it.

A Wide Range of Alternative Investments

What we’re doing on the Alts Summit task force is looking at the different types of content that advisors need to know to understand alternative investments. This includes making sure that a wide range of product sponsors are present at the conference. It also includes making sure that whether an advisor is new to alts or has been offering them for some time, there are educational opportunities for everyone.

In addition to product sponsors, we’ll be hearing from industry experts on topics like technology, compliance, and marketing in relation to alternatives, as well as advisor practice management. 

Register Today
If you haven’t registered yet, plan on joining us in Atlanta, March 6th through March 8th for the Blue Vault Bowman 2023 Alts Summit.

WE LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU THERE AND HELPING YOU LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW YOU CAN INCORPORATE ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENTS IN YOUR PRACTICE. REGISTER NOW.

3 Ways To Improve Your Website

December 29, 2022 | Marketing Intent

Does your website provide a compelling journey for financial advisors, or is it a confusing maze of information? If you haven’t positioned your website as the start of your client journey, you’re missing out on a key engagement tool.

BELOW WE’LL DISCUSS THREE WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR WEBSITE AND ENGAGE FINANCIAL ADVISORS TO A GREATER LEVEL.

First, we’ll talk about how to design your website for financial advisors. Second, we’ll cover the information that will help them stay on your site longer. And third, we’ll discuss what you want them to do next.

Customizing Your Website

Let’s talk about customizing your website to financial advisors. In our industry, there are a lot of facets of business that commercial real estate or asset managers are involved in. There are different types of businesses, lines of business and investment strategies and sometimes we try to do a one size fits all approach to websites.

That can end up being too much information for financial advisors. So, it’s important to develop a specific path you envision advisors going down or develop a site that is specific to advisors.

Website Stickiness

How do you keep advisors on your website for longer? As you’re thinking about developing a site, think about what advisors want to know, their frequently asked questions and how to engage them. It’s a balance of giving them the information they need without providing too much information. Think about how to keep them engaged and capturing more of their time, so they go further and further into your content.

Tell Them What to Do Next

Finally, tell the advisors what you want them to do next. Do you want them to contact you for more information or to set up a meeting with your sales team? Make sure your calls to action are clear on your site.

WE CAN HELP IMPROVE YOUR WEBSITE

If you need help improving your website to engage financial advisors, please reach out to us and we’d be happy to help.

Maximize Your LinkedIn Potential

December 12, 2022 | Marketing Intent

What’s one of the first things people do when they meet you or see one of your posts on LinkedIn? They check out your LinkedIn profile.

PLAN TO USE LINKEDIN TO ITS MAXIMUM POTENTIAL TO SHOW YOUR CREDIBILITY AND GAIN TRUST WITH PROSPECTS AND CLIENTS.  

LinkedIn Newsletter 

A great way to do that is through the LinkedIn newsletter, which is a newer feature. It allows you to publish an article each week. And by doing that, you can stay in front of your prospects in a really easy way.  

First, think about what to talk to your prospects about. What’s a short and compelling topic? It doesn’t have to be a long white paper length piece of content. Next, think about your target audience and what they’re interested in learning about from you, what their pain points are or new information that might benefit them. 

Setting up Your Newsletter 

To set up your newsletter on LinkedIn, go to the same place you want to make a post.

• Click on this prompt and there will be a section that says, “write article”.

• Once you click on this function, if you have creator mode, you’ll have the option to create a newsletter.

• A nice function with LinkedIn is when you create that first newsletter article, it sends a notification to all your first level contacts in LinkedIn and sends them an email to notify them you now have a newsletter and invite them to subscribe.

• This is a great way to engage with every contact. Subscribers will be notified every time you publish a newsletter article. We suggest publishing a newsletter once a week.  

Using a Newsletter to Your Advantage 

How are we using the LinkedIn newsletter article? When we do the videos you see on LinkedIn, we’re turning them into our LinkedIn newsletter articles as well. It’s a great way to multipurpose content and use the LinkedIn newsletter articles to stay in front of your prospects.  

IF YOU NEED HELP CREATING A LINKEDIN NEWSLETTER ARTICLE OR WANT TO EXPLORE IT FURTHER, GIVE US A CALL. 

Marketing Intent: Optimizing Your LinkedIn Profile

October 25, 2022 | Marketing Intent

You may have noticed that we at Marketing Intent have been using LinkedIn a lot more to stay in front of our target audiences, as well as our clients. LinkedIn can be a really powerful connection tool.

HOW DO YOU OPTIMIZE YOUR LINKEDIN PROFILE TO CONNECT WITH BOTH YOUR PROSPECTS AND YOUR CLIENTS?  

Use the Tagline

There’s an area underneath the name on your LinkedIn profile, and a lot of people use that for their job title, but we think there might be better ways to use that real estate.

One great thing you can use is a tagline. It can be a tagline on what your company does but stay away from any jargon or messaging that may be confusing. It should be quick and to the point. It’s a great way to advertise exactly who you are. And a tagline can allude to your title and what you do, so you don’t need to have a title featured.

There is another place, as well, that a lot of people don’t use and that’s the banner. You can do the same thing there and include your tagline or feature another point about what your firm does or what you focus on.

Include Your Target Audience

We suggest making sure you include your target audience in the two areas outlined above and highlight who they are. For example, “We help single women better prepare for retirement.” That way prospects clearly understand who you serve.

Something we want to point out is that it is okay to be repetitive, because we all know that everyone skims. The key is ensuring your target audience is highlighted – it will quickly grab their attention.

Building Trust

How can advisors help build trust with prospects and clients on their LinkedIn profile? Trust is huge, especially for advisors. There is so much going on these days and during rapidly changing market conditions, building trust is very valuable. We think it serves advisors further than most people realize.

One thing you can do to earn trust is to feature content you create. Don’t just repost other people’s content. Feature content you create. It shows your personality, how you communicate and who you are.

It also gives people a glimpse of what it’s like to work with you because they can see your perspective and what you’re trying to get across to your audience.

IF YOU NEED HELP OPTIMIZING YOUR LINKEDIN PROFILE AND MAKING SURE THAT IT SPEAKS TO YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE, REACH OUT TO MARKETING INTENT, WE’D BE HAPPY TO HELP YOU.

Solar Energy Overview

September 27, 2022 | Marketing Intent

Growth in Solar Energy

As part of the renewable energy sector, solar investments are essential to reducing carbon emissions, enhancing the reliability, security and resilience of the U.S. power grid and promoting U.S. energy independence.¹

According to Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), the average annual growth of the U.S. solar market over the past ten years was 33%, and solar accounted for 46% of all new electricity generating capacity added in the U.S. in 2021, the third year in a row that solar made up the largest share of new capacity.²

Solar photovoltaic (PV) is projected to be the “king of electricity” by the International Energy Agency (IEA), anticipated to experience 12% annual growth from 2019-2040.³

Source: International Energy Agency (IEA) World Energy Outlook 2020 (Table A.3)

How Solar Panels and Solar Farms Work

A PV cell is made of semiconductor materials that absorb the photons emitted by the sun and produce usable electricity. In a solar farm, many individual solar panels are grouped together to produce and transmit energy to the power grid and to homes and businesses.

Source: Renew Wisconsin

Low-Cost Electricity Solution

According to Deloitte, solar PV systems are among the most cost-competitive energy resources on the market.⁴ In fact, the global weighted average of a utility-scale solar project costs is projected to fall by 85% from 2009 to 2025.⁵ Solar has already reached grid parity in many areas of the world where its low cost now beats both coal and nuclear.⁶ Solar’s low costs have allowed it to become a self-sustaining industry that is not reliant on government subsidies.⁶

Solar Farm Costs Are Shrinking⁵

Solar Energy Creates Jobs

The solar energy industry employs approximately 3.4 million people worldwide, and 250,000 people in the U.S., more than the combined number of jobs in the U.S. coal and oil-gas extraction industries.⁶

Potential Investment Portfolio Benefits

Alternative energy – including solar – has the potential to offer investors portfolio benefits, including:

• Diversification

• Low correlation to other asset classes

• Potential to generate stable income

• Potential to generate attractive total returns

¹ https://www.energy.gov/eere/renewable-energy

² https://www.seia.org/research-resources/solar-data-cheat-sheet

³ https://macsolarindex.com

⁴ https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/energy-and-resources/articles/renewable-energy-outlook.html

⁵ Bloomberg.

⁶ https://macsolarindex.com

Learn more about Marketing Intent at www.marketingintent.com.

3 Ways to Improve Your Marketing Execution

July 30, 2022 | Cherie Fournier | Marketing Intent

When most people think of marketing, they think of the creativity that goes into copywriting design and web development. But we all know without a solid strategy for execution, that creativity doesn’t go very far. In this article, we’ll discuss three ways to improve your marketing execution through project management, technology know-how, and procedures. 

Project Management

Let’s start with project management. Most marketing projects are more in depth than they might seem on the surface, with many moving parts. At Marketing Intent, we use Trello to manage our projects as well as our clients’ projects. Trello is a simple and versatile project management software that we use for anything from managing an event to launching a fund. Trello allows us to keep all project details and deadlines in one place so we can keep tabs on how deliverables are moving forward. There are many choices in project management software today. Pick one that is simple, fits your needs – and most importantly – that you will use consistently. 

Technology Know-How

A software tool is only as good as how you use it. So, it’s important to have somebody on your marketing team who is comfortable with technology – and not just on the project management side of the equation. In today’s world of digital marketing, marketers are using numerous types of technologies to do their jobs. Sometimes 10 or 12 different programs. It’s important to have somebody who is comfortable and willing to learn and maximize these technologies. 

But keep in mind that you don’t have to use every available function of a technology. The goal is to use technology to increase your efficiency. Not to get overwhelmed by its features, or go so far into functionality that you take time away from core marketing tasks, or the technology becomes so complicated that you don’t use it.

Procedures

That takes us to our next point. And this one may be foreign to many people thinking about marketing. Procedures. I like to think of procedures as being kind to my future self. 

Oftentimes in marketing, there are projects that need to be done once a month or quarter. Instead of trying to remember what you did last time or re-learning the process every time you’re working on that project, take time to create procedures for the project. Next time you do that project, refer to your document and you’ll save time and brain power…and your future self will thank you! 

To recap, we’ve talked about improving your marketing efficiencies through project management, the use of technology and procedures. These are strategies we use every day at Marketing Intent to manage our own projects, as well as our clients. If you’d like help becoming more efficient in your marketing, reach out to us, we’d be glad to help.

About Marketing Intent

We are a sales-focused marketing group specializing in financial services with a track record in marketing that helps drive sales. We live by the mantra, “nothing happens until something is sold” – whether that’s an asset manager’s investment strategy or a financial plan for a client. Our marketing serves as the backbone of sales. Our work makes your prospects and clients take notice, ask questions and listen to your story. Learn how we help asset managersand financial advisors create marketing that grows their businesses. 

Marketing Teams Aren’t Immune To Inflation

July 14, 2022 | Marketing Intent

Inflation – it’s all across our economy and affecting almost every part of our lives, including our marketing teams. If you’ve been searching for marketing candidates, you’ve probably noticed a demand for increased salaries, but you may not be getting qualified candidates applying for your positions or the hiring process is draining your team resources.

LET’S TALK ABOUT HOW AN OUTSIDE MARKETING FIRM CAN HELP TAKE WORK OFF YOUR SHOULDERS BY TACKLING SHORTER AND LONGER-RANGE MARKETING PROJECTS.

The Sprint Project

The “sprint” marketing project is a short project where you might already have content developed and you just need it developed into an email, flier or a social media campaign. That’s where an outside marketing firm can step in quickly, especially one who knows your industry. They will help you push the project to the finish line.

The Half Marathon Project

Next, let’s talk about the “half marathon.” This is a project you may already have started and know it’s going to take some time to complete. You may need help with strategy, planning, writing or designing some deliverables. Again, an outside marketing firm can step in, accelerate the project and see it through to completion.

The Marathon Project

Then there’s the “marathon.” These projects can last multiple months. We often see these projects as the ones that firms have started, but don’t have the time to dedicate to them. An outside marketing firm can help you with planning, making sure everything stays on track over the months, as well as creating the deliverables. Examples of marathon projects are fund launches, series of videos, and automating email marketing.

Reallocating FTE Dollars to Outside Resources

Regardless of how in-depth your marketing project is, from that short sprint to a long marathon, taking the dollars you have earmarked for full-time employees (FTE) when you just can’t fill those roles, and dedicating them to an outside marketing resource can go a long way in helping you reach your marketing goals.

CONTACT US TO FILL IN THE GAPS

If you need help, as you’re looking to fill marketing roles and just aren’t finding the right candidates, reach out to us and we’d be happy to fill the gaps.

How to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile to Attract Clients

July 8, 2022 | Marketing Intent

LinkedIn had more than 188 million members in the United States in 2021. While most financial advisors have some presence on LinkedIn, the platform offers the opportunity to prospect, build trust with potential and current clients and to stand out among your competitors.

Position your LinkedIn company page and your personal page well for optimal engagement by maximizing the use of these no-cost features.

Build a Company Page

If you’re an advisor at your own independent firm, start by creating a page for your company if you don’t already have one. If you do, take a fresh look at it to be sure it’s as complete as possible. According to LinkedIn, completed pages get 30% more traffic.

Create Your Tagline

Your tagline is the line of text directly below your name or your company’s name. Explain in one sentence what you or your firm does. Keep it simple – avoid industry jargon and mention your target clients. For example: We help single women plan a more secure financial future.

Use Your Banner Image to Market What You Do

Your banner image is the area in LinkedIn to the right of your photo or your company logo. Use this space to market what you do. You can restate your tagline or highlight another key area of your firm. If you use a photo in your banner, relate it to your business and design your banner to overlay text on the image. And make sure your banner is designed appropriately to appear well on desktop computers and mobile devices, with no text cut off.

Share the Problem You Solve in About

Include an overview of your firm and of yourself in the About section that’s relevant to your target audiences. What problem do you solve and what’s your solution? How is your approach unique? Use short sentences and paragraphs.

Outline Your Services/Specialties for Searchability

The services section in your personal profile and the specialties section in your company profile can be used to add what you do for clients, like financial planning. You can add 10 services that will help prospects find you when they search for a certain type of service.

Maximize Profile Sections to Build Credibility & Trust

Under the Add to Profile section on your personal page, there are several choices that can help you build trust with prospects. When editing this section, the information is divided into Core, Recommended, Additional. Key areas to focus on to build trust are your education and experience, ongoing professional education, licenses/certifications, and community involvement.

Feature Content You’ve Created

On your personal profile, take full advantage of the Featured section. This is where you can post client-approved blog posts from your website. You can also repurpose those posts into a LinkedIn newsletter and feature your newsletter in the Featured section.

Create a LinkedIn Newsletter for Maximum Reach

To create a newsletter, in the post box, click on Write Article and follow the prompts. You’ll need a name and an image for your newsletter. Your connections and followers will be invited to subscribe to your newsletter once the first article has been successfully published. Subscribing means they’ll receive a notification and email when you publish a new newsletter article.

Engage Prospects with Buttons

On your company page, you can add a button for page viewers to engage further. LinkedIn offers button choices of Contact Us, Learn More, Register, Sign Up, Visit Website. Link the button to where you want to direct prospects to connect with you further.

Your LinkedIn personal and company profiles can be powerful tools in your prospecting efforts to help potential clients find you, share the solutions you offer to your clients, establish your credentials and provide your perspective. Work through improving your profiles incrementally as you have time until you’ve maximized all areas.

Three Reasons Why A Low Quality Website Hurts Your Business

June 24, 2022 | Marketing Intent

Have you ever come across a company and visited their website only to be shocked by what you found?  Maybe you came across jargon, outdated information, or even typos. This is why it’s so important to make sure your website is of high quality.

IN THIS ARTICLE, WE’LL COVER THREE REASONS A LOW-QUALITY WEBSITE HURTS YOUR BUSINESS: CREDIBILITY AND TRUST, YOUR INNOVATION IMPRESSION, AND THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE.

Credibility and Trust

Let’s dig into credibility and trust. When someone visits your website and they find typos or outdated information or they don’t understand what you’re presenting, they get a negative impression. They may be thinking – is that how this person/company operates? Do they not tie up loose ends? Do they not pay attention to details? Are they a poor communicator?

That isn’t the impression you want to leave with prospective or current clients. Think about what you’re communicating when your website isn’t current, clear and accurate.

Innovation

The second reason to have a high-quality website is your innovation impression. A high-quality website design immediately communicates innovation and creativity – whereas a poorly designed site communicates a lack thereof.

The “canned” websites that have become commonplace in the financial services industry also fall into the low innovation camp, using the same basic design as other firms and sometimes even the same or similar content.

You may be thinking – “Yeah, yeah, I know I’m not creative.” And a lot of people in the financial services industry do lean toward the analytical side, but we can still communicate and market in creative and innovative ways. This is particularly important for financial advisors who want to attract younger clients. They will be looking for the latest in website, technology and communication trends and how you’re appealing to them digitally.

The Customer Experience

Now let’s talk about the customer experience and what you’re actually asking someone to do when they come to your site. If they are visiting your site to find a particular piece of information about you or answer a question- and they have to dig around your site without success – you’ve created a negative impression and caused frustration.

If that visitor is a prospect, they are probably not going to pursue contacting you or working with you. You made it too hard for them and they will feel like you don’t have their interests/needs top of mind. It sounds basic, but people’s attention spans are limited when it comes to vetting a company or a person they are considering working with. They will move on very quickly if they don’t have a positive experience.

To recap, we’ve discussed:

• The importance of a high-quality website

• The damage a low-quality site can do to your credibility and trust

• Your innovation impression

• The customer experience for prospects and clients

CONTACT US FOR MARKETING HELP

If you need any help improving your website, contact Marketing Intent. We’d be happy to help you stand out among your competitors.

Three Audiences New Asset Managers Need To Understand

June 24, 2022 | Marketing Intent

Are you an asset manager that’s new to offering your products through financial advisors and the broker-dealer network?

IN THIS ARTICLE, WE’LL TALK ABOUT THE VARIOUS AUDIENCES YOU’LL BE TARGETING, SO YOU CAN GET A GOOD UNDERSTANDING OF WHO’S WHO AS YOU ENTER A NEW DISTRIBUTION CHANNEL.

Due Diligence Officers and Home Office Personnel

Let’s start with due diligence officers and home office personnel at broker-dealers and RIA firms. This group is at the top of the hierarchy. If we think about it flowing from the very top, where more information is allowed, down to the bottom, where less is.

Think about this group as the gatekeepers, with your goal of getting a selling agreement. You are sharing more information on the offering with them than you would with advisors or investors. This could be your track record, detailed financials, and pieces of information that you typically wouldn’t push down beyond them to advisors and investors.

Once you have the selling agreement in place, don’t forget the nurture. A mistake we often see asset managers make is to get the selling agreement and have established a relationship with a due diligence officer, but then they let communication taper off.

It’s important to continue to give updates on your offering. If you are a commercial real estate firm, for example, give updates on properties that you’re buying, or distributions you’re making to investors. It becomes a public relations effort in some ways, to keep due diligence officers/home office personnel updated. When they understand what you’re doing, they can continue to support your offering and positively influence future selling agreements with your firm.

Financial Advisors & RIAs

The next audience is financial advisors and RIAs. With this group, your goal is to always make it simple. We are in a world of complicated financial investment products. Make sure financial advisors and RIAs easily understand what you do.

An example we like to use is industrial real estate equals Amazon packages. Boil down what you do to reflect a lifestyle trend or an everyday topic so advisors will understand easily and feel confident about presenting your investment product to their investors.

Like with due diligence officers, continue to update advisors on your offerings, progress, changes, distributions and activity. They appreciate staying informed – especially when it comes to answering client questions. No one like to be caught off guard.

Investors

The third audience is investors – prospective investors as well as investors that end up investing in your fund. With prospective investors, your conduit to them is going to be through financial advisors and RIAs for the most part. You will produce materials that can be used with the end investor, but you’re going to rely on financial advisors to communicate that information to them.

Again, simplicity is so important because we all know we have really short attention spans. Even though we might be analytical people and some investors could be accredited investors or high net worth individuals, keeping it simple is key so they understand your offering quickly and easily.

Once investors are in your fund, make sure you’re communicating regularly with them, so again, they understand what’s happening. Build trust by keeping them updated.

We’ve covered the key audiences you’ll be communicating with as you work with broker-dealers and RIAs:

• Due diligence/home office personnel

• Financial advisors

• Prospective investors, and the investors in your fund

NEED HELP COMMUNICATING WITH YOUR AUDIENCES?

If you need help understanding your audiences or better communicating with them, contact Marketing Intent. We’re happy to help.

It’s Not About Your Services – 3 Ways To Connect With The Right Clients On Your Website 

June 13, 2022 | Marketing Intent

It’s not about your services when you’re thinking about your website and how to attract the right clients –  it’s who you would like to work for instead of what you do.

TODAY LET’S TALK ABOUT:

How to help prospects understand that you are the right financial advisor for them. We’ll also be covering how to build trust with prospects, as well as how to be clear about what you do for clients, not just the services you offer.  

Helping Prospects Know You’re Right for Them

How are you attracting the right clients to your website? In the financial services industry, it’s not uncommon to see financial advisor websites with pictures of sailboats, clocks, compasses and even trees with the sunlight coming through. While we all enjoy that imagery and the sereneness that it may bring to our minds, it’s not immediately apparent to prospects that you help people like them. 

It’s more important, as you think about your website, to use language and images that resonate with your target audiences. If you’re targeting women, for example, you want that front and center on your website – images of women or phrases that appeal to women and the financial struggles they’re facing.  

Building Trust 

It’s amazing how far you often have to dig into a financial advisor’s website to see who they are. We are all people, and we want to work with other people, not just entities. That’s why it’s important to have images of yourself on your site – on your home page, your team page or your bio page. Humanize yourself and help prospects connect with you. 

You can also build connections by showing your personal interests through a “get to know you” section that has a few points that highlight who you are as a person and what you’re interested in. These points may even end up being conversation starters with prospects. 

What You Do for Clients

It’s important to be clear about what you do for your clients beyond the services you offer. When you think about the list of services on many financial advisors’ websites, you may see 401k plans, 529 plans, IRAs, etc. 

That list doesn’t help you stand out among your prospects. It’s just the tools you use to help your clients. Think more about how you’re helping your clients: 

• Are you helping them maximize wealth? 

• Are you helping them find a way to afford college?  

• Are you helping them choose a college or evaluate what a college education is going to do for their child?  

Think more about what you are doing for clients and make sure your website reflects that. 

To recap…

• You can appeal to the right clients on your website through imagery and words.

• Build trust with prospects by bringing you, as a person, forward in your marketing- whether that’s images of you or sharing your interests – as a common connection point.

• Communicate exactly what you’ll do for your clients, not just the tools you use to do your job.

If you need a branding or a website refresh, contact Marketing Intent. We help financial advisors better reach their target clients.