-Insights-
Creating a 2025 Marketing Plan to Meet Strategic Goals
Help acquire more clients and achieve greater confidence in your growth goals with a defined marketing strategy.
Creating and implementing a Marketing Plan is a critical aspect of any successful advisory business, and this is the time of year to start planning your 2025 marketing focus. Unfortunately, too many advisors use a random approach to marketing, which can lead to multiple standalone marketing activities that often lack an understanding of how that activity will help the firm reach its growth goals. This activity-driven marketing is not systematized, lacks consistency, and can lead to yo-yo growth.
Your marketing should be strategy and process-driven to create sustainable and scalable business growth, so consider stopping activity-driven marketing techniques and use the following structured approach to your 2025 marketing planning process.
Determine Your 2025 Growth Goal
Taking a top-down approach to your marketing planning process will help clarify the why behind your marketing. As the name suggests, top-down planning involves defining your firm’s high-level growth goal and then breaking the goal down into smaller specific objectives.
Step one of the planning process is to identify your growth goal for 2025.
Define Your Sources of Growth
Most people consider marketing to be identifying prospects. However, if you want to grow exponentially, the marketing plan should focus not only on your prospects but also on your current clients, centers of influence, and your brand and reputation in your community.
To help determine sources of growth, delineate between internal, external, and market growth.
Internal, sometimes known as organic growth, is growth through your current client base, such as referrals. External growth comes from sources outside your current client base, including prospecting activities such as Facebook advertising or obtaining referrals from third parties such as Centers of Influence (COIs).
Market performance and Mergers and Acquisitions are sources of growth but not something you address through your marketing plan.
The growth goals for your internal and external sources of growth should equal your firm’s overall growth goal outside of market performance.
Let’s look at an example of establishing growth goals:
ABC Wealth Management
2025 Firm Growth Goal = $18M in additional assets under management (AUM)
$12M Internal Growth – client referrals and additional client assets
$6M External Growth – prospecting activities and COI referrals
Growth Oriented Campaigns
After allotting goals to each source of growth, you are now ready to build out the rest of your plan with marketing campaigns and tactics aimed at those sources of growth. Each campaign and related activities will have their own measurable goals.
The campaigns to promote internal growth relate to strengthening the client experience, encouraging new client referrals, retaining current clients, and capturing new assets.
External marketing campaigns go outside your firm to build awareness of your firm within your target market.
Let’s take the example above of ABC Wealth Management.
Firm Growth Goal $18M
Internal Growth Goal – $12M
Campaign One – Held Away Assets Goal – $9M in new AUM
Campaign Two – Client Referrals Goal – $3M in new AUM
External Growth Goal – $6M
Campaign One – Community Outreach – Goal $3M in new AUM
Campaign Two – Centers of Influence – Goal $3M in new AUM
Define your Targets
Each campaign should be focused and directed at a defined target. For example, if your goal is to capture clients’ held-away assets, your target could be clients who are still working, over the age of 59.5, and have assets in a company 401k eligible for an in-service rollover.
Decide on Tactics
Internal campaigns can be considered relationship marketing, focusing on establishing an impactful client experience. Tactics include client appreciation or educational events, newsletters, and personal connections on social media. Consider ways you can improve your communication and offer a personalized experience.
Taking the example above of targeting clients with eligible 401k rollovers, you could host a webinar for clients to discuss the options and benefits of rolling over their 401k.
External campaigns include traditional business development tactics such as advertising, community outreach, and Centers of Influence marketing.
Define goals for each marketing activity, such as the number of attendees to a webinar.
Implementation and Tracking
Utilize technology to help you execute on your plan. Use your Client Relationship Manager to help you implement and track activity results a through to business outcomes. Put each campaign on the calendar and plan. If you do not have the internal resources to implement your plan, consider hiring an intern or outsourcing to an external marketing firm.
Additional Resources Available
An effective Marketing Plan is essential for any business that wants to attract clients, build relationships, and create advocates and superfans. Download the Beacon Marketing Plan Template to get started and contact your Beacon representative if you would like additional material to help. They can provide you with ideas for a campaign designed to help with 401k rollovers.
FOR ADVISOR USE ONLY. NOT INTENDED FOR CONSUMER SOLICITATION PURPOSES.
Beacon Capital Management, Inc. is an investment adviser registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Additional information about Beacon Capital Management is also available on the SEC’s website at www.adviserinfo.sec.gov under CRD number 120641. Beacon Capital Management only transacts business in states where it is properly registered or excluded or exempted from registration requirements.
Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments or investment strategies.
Sammons Financial® is the marketing name for Sammons® Financial Group, Inc.’s member companies, including Beacon Capital ManagementSM.
KLJ-103124–A