top of mind awareness Archives - Don Connelly & Associates

Ten Strategies for Encouraging Your Clients to Spread the Word About Your Business

/ by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments

We’ve often posted about the importance of creating an extraordinary client experience to make yourself more “buzzworthy” as an advisor your clients will want to discuss. You can’t even think about creating a compelling word-of-mouth buzz until you create the kind of service that feels personal, unique, and genuinely caring to your clients. That should be your primary focus.

However, beyond creating an extraordinary client experience, it’s essential to turn your clients into vocal advocates, like human billboards spreading the word about your business. While it does happen—having a delighted client go on and on about your service to a friend or colleague—most people are not naturally inclined to initiate a conversation like that without some help and encouragement.

Here are ten effective ideas to inspire your clients to spread the word and advocate for your business proactively.

How Newer Financial Advisors Can Build a Solid Client Base

/ by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments

There’s never been a better time to build a financial advisory practice. More people than ever are clamoring for quality, objective financial advice to guide critical life decisions. It’s also a very challenging time for newer financial advisors as the competition for quality prospects is fierce.

However, unlike fledgling financial advisors of yesteryear who worked with little more than a reverse phone directory to find clients, advisors building a practice today have the advantage of years of hindsight along with some cool technology to get them over the proverbial hump.

Rather than applying a dated “all of the above” approach to prospecting that included endless cold calls, direct mail, and even blast emails, newer financial advisors can systematically and incrementally build a solid client base using a proven marketing and sales framework fit for the digital age.

How to Get More Unsolicited Referrals from Clients

/ by Don Connelly / Prospecting / 0 comments

Ask any successful advisor what the key to their success is, and they’ll tell you—referrals. You can’t grow a profitable practice without a steady stream of referrals. When you ask for and receive a referral, it’s an indication that you impressed your client enough to act on your request. But what if you didn’t have to ask for referrals? What if your clients were so impressed with you that they took the time to share their experience with someone without you having to ask?

You know what that feels like if it’s happened to you. But, for many advisors, it happens so rarely that it’s a major shock when it does. So, how do you make it happen consistently enough to make it an expectation?

How to Create a Systematic Communications Strategy

/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship / 0 comments

By now you should know the importance of staying engaged with your clients. Clients who feel less engaged are less likely to trust their advisor relationship and more likely to bolt when things go south, if not before. At a minimum, they will feel less inclined to recommend you to others. Suddenly, it’s as if you’re spinning desperately on a hamster wheel with little hope of getting off.

Most advisors would agree that having a systematic communications strategy is essential for adding and retaining clients. The challenge for many is how to go about it. The exact tools and methods an advisor would use could vary greatly depending on their communication preferences, prospecting methods, and available time and resources. Here are a few steps to get you started.

To Develop Top-of-Mind Awareness with Clients, Develop Your Authority

/ by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself / 0 comments

We’ve reached the fourth and final issue in our series on Critical Issues Facing Financial Advisors Right Now—Staying Top-of-Mind with Your Clients. Of the four critical issues presented, developing top-of-mind awareness is perhaps the most crucial because it is paramount to your ultimate success. If you are not the first person your clients think of when good or bad things happen to them, things that impact their financial lives or the lives of their friends and family, you could have a long, slow slog to the next level.

I’ve written on the importance of top-of-mind-awareness in past posts, along with the strategies you can use to develop it among your clients. The key to remember is creating top-of-mind awareness is not about pestering your clients with calls and emails just to keep your name in front of them. You don’t want to annoy your clients.

The key is reaching them in a way that heightens their perception of you as someone who’s not a typical advisor but rather as a genuine authority in their field. Authorities have influence. Some even develop a kind of star power that gets people’s attention. What makes an authority? Content.

4 Critical Issues Facing Financial Advisors Right Now

/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

In the year and a half since the beginning of the pandemic, the financial advisory industry has undergone massive change, impacting the way financial advisors practice their trade as well as the behaviors and habits of clients. Much of that change was underway before COVID but has accelerated or come more sharply into focus because of it.

Advisors have done well to adapt to changes precipitated by the pandemic—becoming adept at virtual communications and navigating the uncertainties of a troubled economy. However, in the wake of these changes, several issues continue to overshadow the industry, requiring advisors to switch from survival mode to aggressively managing them not just to survive but to thrive.

In the next couple of weeks, we will delve more deeply into some of these issues, the challenges they present, and how advisors can meet them head on for a greater chance at success. Among the many vital issues advisors are facing right now, here are four they must contend with in the immediate future.

8 Client Event Ideas for Financial Advisors

/ by Don Connelly / Managing the Relationship, Prospecting / 2 comments

Client events have always been the most effective way to increase client and prospect engagement, providing the opportunity to express appreciation while strengthening personal connections. It has always been a challenge for financial advisors to keep their clients engaged and their prospects enthusiastic, more so during the pandemic, keeping everyone at a virtual distance. Now, with the pandemic waning, client events should once again stand as a key pillar in advisors’ marketing plans.

How to Become Top of Mind with Your Clients and Prospects

/ by Don Connelly / Marketing Yourself / 0 comments

As a financial advisor, you can’t always be there when a client or prospect has a need. You can only hope that you’re the first person they think of when they want to discuss it or when one of your clients is asked to recommend an advisor. That’s where top-of-mind awareness comes in. If you can develop it effectively, your name is more likely to be the first to come to mind when they have a need.

Chances are, when you crave a cola, you think Coca Cola. That’s because Coke spends hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising to ensure you do. You want that same reflexive thought to occur with your clients and prospects, but you don’t have to blow out your budget to create similar top-of-mind awareness. The objective of a top-of-mind strategy is to be remembered, and you can accomplish that with five easy steps.