Flex Your Marketing Reach

Flex Your Marketing Reach

Samantha Davison

Hello, and thank you for tuning in to this episode of the LPL share cast series. I'm your host, Samantha Davison through this series, we're bringing you news and insights from LPL leaders and partners to help you run your business day in and day out. We know that having a strong digital presence can lead to strong lasting connections with clients. We also know that many advisors are not just financial advisors, but also serve as the marketing person for their business or program in a fast-paced digital world. How can advisors elevate their brand, whether they're just starting out in the business and do very little marketing, or they've been around for a while and would like to ramp up their marketing efforts. That's what we're going to talk about today. And joining me now, our Mike Kent vice president of business solutions and Bob Chitrathron, an LPL advisor and CFO and vice president of wealth planning at Simplified Wealth Management. Thank you both for being here.

Mike Kent

Glad to be here to be here.

Samantha Davison

Mike, let's start with a big overarching view when we say marketing. What does that mean?

Mike Kent

Yeah, I think that's a great place to start Sam. You know, when we think about the term marketing kind of in more traditional sense, uh, we think about flyers. We think about billboards. We think about TV advertising and radio advertising and, and newspaper ads, right? Um, but today marketing kind of extends its breadth into new areas, right? So when we talk about marketing today, we're going to be really thinking about what, what are I think are three key components. One is client communication, how are we communicating thoughtfully and effectively to our clients? Two is what is the role of digital communication in business development. And, and then the third piece that really runs parallel to both is the role of the digital presence of the business.

Samantha Davison

And so then why is it such an essential component of an, an advisors overall business strategy?

Mike Kent

Yeah, so, so if you look at just the marketplace as a whole, not just financial services, um, but really our, our current, um, kind of society, we engage online, right? We look at new restaurants by going to things like Yelp and getting recommendations from friends and checking out menus online and looking at the settings right before we decide, Hey, that's the place I want to go. Our, our really our consumer society is really driven by that digital engagement and investors are part of that same consumer society, right? They're looking to learn and vet out a financial advisor ahead of time online before they decide I want to work with this person. And so what we've seen is that this need for a strong, effective, thoughtful, digital presence matters more than ever, and will only continue to matter for our advisors.

Samantha Davison

So Bob, you've been an advisor for 17 years early on. You knew you had to get the word out about your business, which in essence was the start of your marketing strategy. Talk to us about that and how you've evolved that approach.

Bob Chitrathorn

Yeah, well, 17 years ago, we can all agree that technology has drastically changed since then. Right? So back when I first started, I was 24, 25 years old, looked very young, right? It was hard to have people with assets actually really take you seriously. So I had to really mark myself and back then, the way I marked myself was, um, kinda like what Mike talked about, you know, uh, flyers or, you know, leaving business cards behind, uh, the more old school traditional ways. And you know, back then it was all about referrals, but in light of knowing that, Hey, we need to get referred to other people. How do we get in front of other people that you're not referred to? And that's where the digital marketing comes into play.

Bob Chitrathorn

And so, you know, over time, that's what I started doing. And then eventually I realized, wow, this takes a lot of time. I can see how it's given me good feedback. I can see how,you know, I'm getting value out of the time, spent doing it, but I'm a financial advisor. I am not a social media poster. I am not a marketer. So I had to eventually figure out how to get some support. And that's when I started taking a look on what is the best way and value for me to kind of take my marketing to the next level.

Samantha Davison

So Mike, like Bob, there are many advisors who are seeing the value of marketing, but likely even more who are not, there are also those who know how to market their business. And then those who don't. So with these differences, talk to us about how LPL is offering the flexibility to do marketing their own way, sort of to help people like Bob.

Mike Kent

Yeah, well, I, and I love what Bob, I love what you just shared there around the evolution of your own marketing for your business. Right? And when we kind of look at the industry as a whole, and you know, we, what we see is some of the biggest challenges advisor space, and this isn't just at LPL Sam, this is industrywide. We see advisors being challenged with content and compliance and understanding what we, they can communicate and then the channels, how are we communicating? And by the, by the end, you take all of these different things. And then they just, the hands are thrown up in the air because they just can't navigate it. Right. And, and now hot off the presses. The second is now going to soon allow us he option of including client testimonials, right?

Mike Kent

When you think about an advisor's day to day and the busyness of that day, where marketing fits is usually off the side and not central, right. What we've done at LPL is really give advisors the option to market the business the way they want to market their business. And so we have a team the marketing consulting team and that team is there to help, you know, Bob and other advisors like Bob, although there's only one Bob to market the business, that the way they want do it and, and maybe take a more, do it yourself approach, right?

Mike Kent

We recognize that that advisors run the business, that the way they want to run it and want to communicate the way they want to communicate. And they know their clients better than anyone. And so we want to give them the tools and resources and expertise to help in reinforce and, and empower them to communicate the way they, they want to. Um, now with that being said, one of the other big challenges that we hear from advisors all the time is Mike. That's great LPL. That's great. You have all these resources. I still don't have the time to do it. And so we created a, a program called marketing solutions, Sam that allows us to give an advisor, , a digital marketing expert to communicate on behalf of their firm and their business to manage that digital presence across websites, social media compliance, email, right digital ads, and really offer our advisors the full breadth and landscape of support needed to more effectively, more thoughtfully communicate out to clients and to prospects, uh, in the digital landscape.

Samantha Davison

And, and Bob, you actually sought out that support from LPL, that expertise. How did you do that? And what is your rep approach? Now explain what it looks like.

Bob Chitrathorn

Well, you know, back then I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I just needed help executing it right. There was just lots of moving pieces and parts. And anybody who knows me, knows I'm really, really cheap. I am a big, big, cheap state, right. So I had to do my dual diligence before hiring any type of outside help because my thought process, well, I can post on Facebook or I can post on LinkedIn. I can do that. I can do this. It's not hard. And granted is not hard, but what's hard is knowing when to do it, how to do it and to get all those little easy pieces together you have to kind of coordinate all that. And that's what makes it hard and really more or less, very time consuming.

Bob Chitrathorn

And I'm a financial advisor. I need someone else to help market me so that I can go out and do what I'm good at. And that's again, improving people's lives and build in my practice.

Mike Kent

Great. And, and Sam, can I, can I add something here too? I, I remember when Bob and I first spoke at about a year and a half or so ago, and you know, what was really, uh, what stood out to me during our conversation was that, uh, Bob had a really clear vision for what he wanted. And he also had a clear recognition that he, he didn't have the bandwidth to do it himself. And so it really came down to like personnel and expertise to go and do the work that needed to be done. And, and to what Bob's point around the website, right, is, is, um, you know, it, it, it's one thing to have a website and it's another thing to, to leverage the website, to be the presence right. And leverage it like a tool instead of just a landing page.

Mike Kent

Right. And, and that, I think that what Bob was saying is, is that all of these different things that we're talking about they're tools, and they need to be leveraged as tools, right. Not something that just sits on the shelf in hopes somebody walks by and is interested in that item. Right, we, we need to attract folks to the business and, and that requires some effort and thought, uh, and in action, ultimately

Samantha Davison

And one other note, as I was listening to you, I was thinking that the marketing approach, when LPL works with an advisor, really it's the, it's an extension of who that advisor is. So what, what they, what they value, what kind of clients they serve, that all that marketing content is shared through all the different ways you just mentioned.

Mike Kent

That's, that's exactly right. So, so one of the things that are our marketing team will do is right at the beginning. And Bob, you can speak to this too. It's all right, Bob, tell me about yourself. How'd you get into business? Tell me about your clients. Right? Who are your clients? Are they teachers, are they engineers? Are they professors, are they small business owners? Are they families like, and, and, and you start to paint a picture around who the audience is, right. And what they need to hear. And that's where that person, just like you said, Sam becomes an extension of the advisor. Right. I use the analogy too, of being the megaphone, right. Our folks end up being the megaphone for the advisor's voice so that it can be heard from more people than just standing on the street corner with, you know, by yourself. Right, get that megaphone up so that it can be heard by more and more people.

Samantha Davison

And there's really no one set marketing approach advisors are different. And so are there marketing strategies as Bob was alluding to, but regardless of the approach, an advisor takes, you have to diversify, what do we mean when we say diversify?

Mike Kent

So diversification of course is a, a big, big word in our business. Isn't it? From a marketing standpoint, when we think about diversification,it's really, really important because what we saw, we did a study recently, Sam, where we looked at our high, what we call our high performers or our top growers at LPL. And when we looked at the attributes, the things that made these advisors different, one of those key things around business development was the amount of things that they were doing. So let me, let me elaborate for a second. So what we saw with these top growers is that on average, they were doing eight or nine or 10 different strategies, those strategies being things like, you know, updating a website, having client appreciation events, right. Working with professional alliances, email campaigns, social media, and you can imagine and think through what those, some of the additional ones are. Right. So on average, they were doing at least eight, the average grower at LPL was doing five, right? So, so there was a lot of time and effort around what was being done. And then the other big thing was the financial investment made. And we saw advisors really making that financial investment in order to diversify those efforts, uh, across the different strategies, uh, that we saw.

Samantha Davison

And Bob, is there anything that you would like to add regarding, you know, your approach?

Bob Chitrathorn

Yeah. I mean, kind of goes to consistency. Um, we've all heard it before, you know, consistency in anything that you do we'll eventually bring results, right? You just got to keep doing it. You got to be consistent at it. And the message has to be consistent. So when it comes to my marketing like Mike talked about, you know, there's many different avenues, you know, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, you know, sometimes Twitter, you know, old school marketing, you know, there's radio ads, TV ads, you know, flyers, things like that. And you have to kind of look at everything as a tool. And the more you use, the more valuable that tool, the tools become, right.

Samantha Davison

So let's talk about the value or the benefits that you've seen out of it. You know, Mike just talked about the high performers and what they have done, but can you give us a sense of, you know, the fact that you decided I'm going to, you know, commit and invest in marketing solutions and as a result, what have you seen?

Bob Chitrathorn

Yeah, well, when I made that commitment, I knew that it wasn't going to be a short term result, right? I mean, some people might get lucky. Again, I I'm on the younger end of the spectrum. And so I knew that I had to be consistent and stay with it and give it time, right. Those who are trying to look for short term results, doesn't matter if it's marketing or, you know, try to get quick rich, or, you know, rich quickly. We all know that it just doesn't happen. Right? You have a higher chance of failing. You need to be able to be patient and let marketing do what it's going to eventually do. And that only works well with working with a team that knows what they're doing. Right. Again, I didn't have time to learn all the ins and out, uh, and all the, you know, behavioral things that go along with marketing.

Bob Chitrathorn

Now, the tangible sense I can see is, you know, I was probably averaging close to 15, 18% growth, per year. And then, come around 20, 20, 20, 21. Now, you know, my practice has grown over 30% easily. It's definitely helped tremendously.

Samantha Davison

So Mike, can we talk a little bit more about, the investing in marketing is like investing in your business there, you have to spend some money to ultimately see the rewards of that.

Mike Kent

That's that's spot on Sam. So let, let me quote some of that a little bit more of that financial investment data from the high performer study we did. So what we found was those same top growers, those high performers on average are spending 66,000 a year. On the average grower at OPL is spending 12,000 a year. That's five and a half times different. That's a big, that's a big difference, right? And when we look at, when we look at the results of that growth, what we saw is, on average, the high performing advisors were getting 29 new clients a year. Whereas the average advisor was getting six and the, even the account sizes were, were bigger too. The average account size for those high performers, with 710, 710,000. And the average advisor was 390,000. And so what I think that results speak to is that when you're investing the time, when you're investing into your business financially, like you just shared Sam, uh, the results are going to come right. And is it, can you attribute it to one social media post or that blog article that's hard to do, right. That's why thinking about this digital presence as a necessary component and compliment to a business development strategy is the right approach, right? What is the role of my digital communication? When I think about growing my business out into the future, and what we saw with these high performers is that there are results and, and they're pretty, pretty meaningful actually.

Samantha Davison

Yeah. It, it really, the numbers speak for themselves. I think. What would you say Mike is, is the biggest misconception about marketing? What do, what do advisors think about marketing? When we say, are you marketing your business?

Mike Kent

Yeah. So I'd say that the biggest misconception is that they're, that they don't do marketing. Right. I hear that quite a bit. Oh, I grew by X, Y, or Z, and I didn't do any marketing. And in reality, there's a, when you start to think about this marketing concept as digital present and what people learn and hear from you and how they experience you when you're not sitting in front of them, all of that is marketing. Right. And so, there's a lot more to the concept of marketing than I think we initially attribute. Right. And, so because of that, there needs to be, I think, greater attention paid to, and, and thought paid to what we are communicating, who are we communicating to and how are we communicating to them right. In person in events online. Right. And recognize that in today's world brand, is that right?

Mike Kent

Your brand is the meeting with, with you as the financial advisor brand is your website brand is the email newsletter that they get or don't get. And is it tailored to that? Person's right. What's in it for me is what the investor's thinking. And so there's a lot more that is attributed to marketing these days than the traditional version of what we thought marketing was in the past. And, and, and so we need to make sure that we're, again, spending the time and attention to building out that marketing strategy and executing on it. Like Bob shared earlier, consistently.

Samantha Davison

And Bob, any final words before I let you both go?

Bob Chitrathorn

Yeah. I mean, I would say kind of along with Michael was saying is a lot of people might think they don't need to do any marketing because they're already getting enough business getting enough referrals. That's great. You know, if you're especially happy with where you are and do not want to improve whatsoever, keep doing what you're doing, you know, that's fine, nothing wrong with that. But if you want the opportunity to maybe see something you haven't seen yet, People I think will get addicted to marketing.

Bob Chitrathorn

Mike talked about how it's 66,000 versus 12,000. And for people listening, they might wonder why is that? Well, I'll tell you exactly what it is once you have something that works, you're going keep trying other things. Because if you spend 10,000, you make 20, I'm going to do that every single day I could. Right? Why not? And then if there's other opportunities, you're going to try that and you're going to try that and you're going to keep what works, but you have the Soma foundation that allows you to be able to put that as part of your business strategy. And you know, when you find things that work, you're going to keep paying for them.

Samantha Davison

Mike and Bob, thank you so much for your time and your insights.To learn more about the flexibility and freedom advisors have access to here at LPL. Be sure to check out our thought leadership series. You can also visit LPL business solutions.com and for current LPL advisors visit the resource center and search marketing solutions.