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Forget ChatGPT, going independent or podcasts. The hottest trend growth-oriented advisors must know is the rise of the fractional marketer.
With marketing the new prospecting, advisors are discovering that introductions through marketing are the key to practice growth in today’s digital-first world.
To meet this marketing need, advisors, especially newer ones, try to be the marketing department in addition to their day job, which often leads to frustration.
Other advisors leverage a friend, family member, or assistant in the office to complete basic marketing tasks. But this fails to produce more fees or clients.
Larger teams may go the full-time-hire route, but this offers mixed results, high turnover, and unexpected marketing costs and management time.
A fractional marketer may be your best choice now and help move your practice to the next level.
What is a fractional marketer?
A fractional marketer works with advisors to develop and execute marketing strategies to grow your practice.
They are strategic, part-time hires, which is how the “fractional” part fits in.
It’s not Uber or Lyft for advisor marketing, but that is the right neighborhood, and fractional marketers can cost-effectively promote your practice.
Fractional marketers work directly for advisors and have their best interests at heart. Fractional marketers are not coaches but rather hands-on marketing professionals.
Let’s explore fractional marketing and its advantages for advisors and teams, so you can decide if one might be for your next initiative.
Five compelling reasons to hire a fractional marketer
Here are the top five reasons to hire a fractional marketer:
1. You need a new marketing plan
Just as you may not want a marketer doing your clients’ financial plans, it can be challenging for most advisors to create their marketing plans.
I’ve created at least 100 comprehensive marketing plans with independent firms. I have a structured process that yields results.
For example, a keystone concept I developed with experience is building the plan around your ideal clients, both in terms of prospecting tactics and how you evolve your services model. See my recent article, Find Your Keystone to Unlock Profits and Scale.
A fractional marketer with experience in marketing strategy can shift to an ongoing coaching role, help you execute some or all the plan, or remain an advisor to the firm, available on demand.
2. You want to launch new capabilities or enter new markets
Many firms add planning and wealth management capabilities over time and want to reach bigger clients, like high- or ultra-high net worth prospects.
Common new markets include new geographic territories, a specific profession like business owners or doctors, or decision-makers for 401(k) plans.
A fractional marketer will help you accomplish those tasks with activities that touch different parts of the practice, like marketing, planning, client management, partnerships, sales, reporting, etc.
More time goes into the launch process than the ongoing care and feeding, so a fractional marketer can scale up or down their time.
This type of project would be typical for one day a week in the planning, building and launch phase and one day a month post-launch.
3. You have a track of your marketing you can’t execute
Many firms use third-party curated content to keep in touch with clients but need copy and programs specifically geared to prospects and to grow their customers.
Fractional marketers often have expertise in creating and customizing prospect content and digital marketing programs to build the opt-in prospect list, nurture and educate that list, and convert interest to meetings and, eventually, new clients.
An obvious example when many firms have employed fractional marketers was to pivot to an all-digital marketing strategy during the pandemic.
While most firms focused solely on virtual meetings, in a fractional marketing role lasting throughout the pandemic, I helped one national firm scale their digital events and video programs to multiply their online events attendees by 12 times and topline sales volume by 2.5 times.
4. Your firm Is going through big changes
Consider hiring a fractional marketer if your firm is undergoing a major transformation. For example, significant changes include moving to independence, switching broker-dealers, merging with another partnership, or overhauling a brand.
For example, firms switching to an independent broker-dealer may use this opportunity to update their logo, value proposition, website text, and core presentation and content. But the broker-dealer may have an in-house marketing agency to create the new branding and build the website.
An independent fractional marketer will act in the best interest of the independent advisory firm to create the messaging, advise on the website map, and manage the build of the website by the agency.
This saves the advisory partner’s time, especially during the transition and achieves a much better result.
5. Your firm is making its first marketing hire
Finally, in making your first full-time marketing hire, many underestimate the hiring costs and ramp-up effort.
Firms often have questions about experience, level, salary, desired credentials, how the hire will fit into the firm, and how they will be managed for success.
The marketer is often hired without answering these questions and needs an advisor marketing playbook to work from. Both sides experience regret, growing pains, or worse.
Fractional marketers will create a comprehensive marketing plan upfront. As part of the strategy, they will outline the role needed to execute the plan and even helped to hire that individual.
The benefits of fractional marketers
Many of the benefits of a fractional marketer are apparent, but here are the key advantages worth highlighting:
- Save money versus full-time resources and save money versus hiring an agency.
- Gain flexibility in hours per week and length of engagement. Teams won’t waste time looking for something for a marketer to do but will get full utilization.
- Hire a marketer with the specific skills, expertise and experience you need.
- Gain experience managing a marketer as it may be an advisor or team lead’s first time handling this role.
- Get specific projects done that may be short-term in nature.
- Fractional marketers are hands-on professionals, and 80%+ of marketing is execution.
- Fractional marketers work directly for advisors (not employed by industry firms) and have their best interests at heart.
I can’t emphasize this last point enough.
A fractional marketer works the advisor directly and part-time, aligned with the advisor’s interests.
A fractional marketer will create your marketing plan, build your marketing identity from scratch, including website, content marketing programs, and social media presence, launch you into a new market like business owners or doctors, or create a specific program like a webinar.
Fractional marketing is a robust yet cost-efficient alternative that allows practices of all sizes to outsource certain aspects of their marketing activities without breaking the bank.
Fractional marketing is a new way of doing business that lets practices and teams leverage outside professionals to rent their “hands,” skills and knowledge as needed.
Try one on your next project or initiative and experience the results yourself!
Bob Hanson is a fractional marketer and author of Marketing Power for Financial Advisors. Get his checklist, Nine Questions Advisors Must Ask Before They Hire a Marketing Agency, Fractional or Full-Time Marketer, click here.
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