Stop Wasting Your Money On "Presence" Marketing

The hit TV show Mad Men (short for Madison Avenue Men) depicted slick ad executives closing multi-million-dollar advertising deals for large brand name corporations like Hilton, Kellogg’s, General Motors and the like, and epitomized that era.

The idea behind presence marketing was that if you gained enough exposure in the marketplace by being seen and heard everywhere – through billboards, TV spots, and radio ads – then your company could occupy mental real-estate in the general public’s mind. The next time someone needed financial advice, they would automatically think of you.

This type of exposure-based marketing is so engrained in our cultural mindset that when we market our own businesses, it’s what we automatically think we are required to do.

But most of the time, as is the case with my coaching client mentioned above, it fails to generate consistent high-net-worth clients to justify the cost. Yet we continue spending because we don’t know what else we should do.

If that’s you, then let me tell you what I told this client: Stop doing presence marketing.

The problem with presence marketing is threefold:

1. People are too busy and overloaded with information than they were 70 years ago. There’s little space in their minds that you can occupy for long enough, simply by advertising your presence in the marketplace. Your presence is instantly forgotten.
2. Presence marketing does not work for low-volume/high-margin business models (which you are in as a professional advisor). It only works for high-volume/low-margin business models, and large brand-name corporations dominate that space.
3. In the long run, it will commoditize you and lower your position in the marketplace as an advisor.

Here’s what I told him:

1. Don’t spend another cent on presence or brand-awareness marketing. Stop it cold.
2. Identify your niche or “lane” containing your most ideal prospects and market to them through their issues, not by advertising your business.
3. Develop a “trust asset” that directly and specifically speaks to their issues.
4. Create your own inbound lead flow system so you can throw out the middleman lead generation providers who are giving you unqualified prospects.

I call this becoming a “trusted authority” to your ideal clients.

Merely advertising your presence in the marketplace is too vague and unspecific. It fails to project authority and generate trust.

But what does generate authority and trust is selectively targeting your most ideal potential clients only, and directly addressing their number-one problem and its urgency. You become the authority on their problem, and they see you as the one they can trust to solve it.

This is the only way to cut through the clutter of the oversaturated marketplace and ensure your marketing isn’t wasted and, instead, generates new clients consistently.

Ari Galper is the world’s number one authority on trust-based selling and is the most sought-after high-net worth/lead generation expert for financial advisors. His newest book, “Trusted Authority” has become an instant best-seller among financial advisors worldwide – you can get a free copy of Ari’s book here and, when you click the “YES” button in the order form, you’ll also receive a complimentary “get new clients” lead generation consultation. Ari has been featured in CEO Magazine, Forbes, INC Magazine and the Australian Financial Review. He is considered a contrarian in the financial services industry and in his book, everything you learned about selling will be turned upside down. No more chasing, no pressure, no closing.

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