In our latest FinTech Conversation, Advisor360°’s Chief Revenue Officer, Jeff Schwantz, sits down with the host of InvestmentNews’ goRIA podcast, Chuck Failla, to examine the importance of modern marketing techniques and practices.
As the Founder and CEO of Sovereign Financial Group, Chuck offers first-hand, actionable insights for financial advisors looking to become an independent registered advisor.
Jeff Schwantz
Today I’mtalking with Sovereign Financial Group CEO Chuck Failla about advisor marketing. In this year's edition of Advisor360°'s Connected Wealth Report, we found that RIAs ranked marketing and prospecting as the number two thing they want to improve, behind only account opening.
Chuck, why do you think marketing is such an important focus for advisors?
Chuck Failla
Without marketing, how do you grow? You need to get your name out there. You need to market to gain referrals. They don't just happen by sitting back and waiting for good things to happen. So, it's not so much just marketing for cold new clients, but also marketing to your clients to help generate those referrals.
What's nice about the independent RIA space is the ability to market without going through multiple layers of compliance. When you have your own RIA shop, you still have to stay compliant, but it's reasonable.
A big wirehouse with 10,000 to 12,000 advisors needs to keep those guard rails tight to keep that one or two percent of the chuckleheads in line. When you're at a RIA firm, your firm might only be one or two people.
It’s the same with technology decisions in the RIA space. If you want a certain technology in your tech stack, you do it. If you want to market a certain way, you do it. You don't have to wait for the mothership to provide it for you.
The last thing I'd say about this is there's a ton of resources out there to help you with your marketing from the technology standpoint—how to get that marketing more efficient, more organized, and more productive.
The good news is that there are a ton of providers out there that can help you increase your marketing. That’s also the bad news because it's almost like drinking from a fire hose. There are a lot of good resources out there, but you have to sort through them to figure out what's best for you.
Jeff: Many advisors ranked webinars and podcasts higher than other types of marketing. How do you think about channels and messaging?
Chuck: I am an advisor every day of the year at Sovereign. So, my marketing tends to be very regular and it’s important to have that consistency. So, once a month, we have something called the "Second Tuesdays with Sovereign" webinar. This forces me to be disciplined and produce content.
We don't push the webinar out on social media. We push out the announcements and ask clients to join us. We also use a neat piece of marketing technology that takes your webinar and puts it in a format that people need to log in for. Now you're capturing emails.
What's also kind of cool is that throughout the webinar it will do little pop-ups. "Are you interested in what Chuck was just talking about? Click here to schedule an appointment." It turns this one-way video feed into something interactive. It is essentially simulating the good old days when I was building my business and we would send out 10,000 postcards, fill up a steakhouse, have the dinners, and go through the whole pyramid. That method is still effective, and this does all that virtually.
This takes a one-time webinar content and makes it live forever while giving you the option to interact with me virtually. As I'm doing the webinar, it'll pop up saying, "Did you like Chuck's thoughts on interest rates? Click here to schedule an appointment." It is a constant call to action. That's one of many examples of how you can utilize technology to help your marketing efforts.
Jeff: That syncs with what I'm seeing, too, Chuck. Another thing that's been fascinating to me is the rise of influencers. Industry leaders in our space are becoming well-known personalities thanks to social media.
It's interesting to watch influencers use different channels with slightly different content to reach different audiences and then interact with them differently. They're building channels that mirror who they are targeting.
Jeff Schwantz, CRO at Advisor360°, is responsible for leading the Sales and Marketing teams and guiding the company’s revenue generation strategy/execution and go-to-market approach.
Jeff Schwantz
