Seven Steps to Writing Your Marketing Plan

Last year we highlighted “Five Reasons to Have a Marketing Plan” to help guide your journey in achieving your goals as a financial professional. Now that you see the value in having a marketing road map in place, you may be asking yourself, “How do I write my own marketing plan?” Good news — Emerald is here to help. We have gathered our expertise from the past 25 years of service in the financial industry and broken down the process into seven easy steps:

1) Establish clear goals

Setting goals and objectives will serve as benchmarks and lay the foundation from which you will build your marketing plan (and your business!). Your goal may be to find 50 new clients this year. Or, you may be looking to retain 99% of your current book of business. Regardless of what your goals are, it is important to establish them and set a timeframe within which you aspire to achieve them.

When setting your goals, create a short-term plan (what can be accomplished in the next 12 months) and a long-term plan (where do I want to be and what do I want to accomplish in the next three years). By doing so, this will help you prioritize your efforts and allow you to focus on goals that will have an impact in the immediate future.

2) Define your target market

Analyze your current book of business. Evaluate the clients you have enjoyed working with and with whom you have had the most success. Determine from the data who you want to work with going forward. Your sweet spot may be pre-retirees, those five or 10 years from retirement. Or, you may prefer to work with people who are already retired or business owners. It doesn't really matter who you want to work with, as that is based on your individual goals and interests. The most important take away is that you need to understand who your target market is so that when you begin to advertise your business, you are marketing to the right people to attain the right results.

3) Evaluation of resources

Prior to taking further action, it is imperative to evaluate the tools and resources you have readily available to you. This includes cash flow and manpower. Whether you work independently or have staff, understanding the scope of what you can accomplish with the support you have will make your goal-setting process more realistic and therefore, achievable.

4) Setting your budget

Setting a marketing budget is critical to developing a marketing plan. To establish a budget, you need to determine what percentage of your revenue are you willing to invest in marketing? That decision is largely based on how much you want to grow your business and how quickly. Both the Counselors to America's Small Business (SCORE) and the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) define the variable for a proper marketing budget to be between 2% and 10% of sales. We've all heard the saying, “You have to spend money to make money” — the idea is to be smart about how you spend and ensure that you are allocating enough to achieve your desired outcome.
Resource: Mastering the World of Marketing: The Ultimate Training Resource from the Biggest Names in Marketing

As an example, if your firm earns $500,000 in annual revenue and you allocate 5% to marketing, that allows you $25,000. Take the $25,000 and start allocating portions to your prospecting, retention, and branding efforts to determine if that is a reasonable budget to achieve your goals. Adjust accordingly.

5) Identify your unique, key success factors

The financial services industry is a competitive atmosphere where your current clients could be someone else's top prospects. In order to set yourself apart it is imperative that you establish the key success factors that make you the right choice for your clients. Identifying your personal strengths and leveraging them to your advantage will work to attract members of your target market. What makes you different? What makes you better? What value do you bring to the table? What makes you the better choice to manage their finances? Once you know this, you can use this information to your advantage when executing your marketing campaigns.

6) Establish strategies and tactics

Achieving your goals requires a plan, or more specifically, a strategy. Realizing that each goal is likely multifaceted with many steps built into it, your strategy will identify each of these components and set benchmarks that need to happen along the way.

Example:

• Goal: Find 50 new clients this year.
• Strategy: Create speaking opportunities around the community to educate small groups of prospects about financial management two times per week.

Related to your strategy, tactics are the tools you will use to achieve your strategies:

• Tactic: Approach the local Chamber of Commerce and offer to speak at their community meetings as a guest speaker, at no cost.

7) Create a marketing calendar

Now it's time to put it on the calendar! Penciling out planned activities for the year is a way to see the bigger picture — a year at a glance. Having an official marketing calendar helps keep you and your staff on task and allows everyone in your office to see what is coming up and what needs to be done to execute that activity. While any calendar will do, the best is to have all 12 months on one large sheet so that you can see exactly what is coming up for the year. If you don't have one, contact Emerald Connect for a complimentary 12-month calendars to assist you in creating your marketing plan.

Be sure to dedicate the time and resources to composing an organized and effective marketing plan. This document will serve as your guide to navigating your business toward achieving your goals.