Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Hosted by Financial Advisor Coach, Ray Sclafani, "Building The Billion Dollar Business" is the ultimate podcast for financial advisors seeking to elevate their practice. Each episode features deep dives into actionable advice and exclusive interviews with top professionals in the financial services industry. Tune in to unlock your potential and build a successful, enduring financial advisory practice.
Ray Sclafani (00:00.142)
Welcome to Building the Billion Dollar Business, the podcast where we dive deep into the strategies, insights, and stories behind the world's most successful financial advisors and introduce content and actionable ideas to fuel your growth. Together, we'll unlock the methods, tactics, and mindset shifts that set the top 1 % apart from the rest. I'm Ray Sclafani, and I'll be your host. At least once a year, every advisory team should conduct
A marketing review. This is not a surface level conversation, not a reaction to a slow quarter, a real structured review of how your firm is telling its story and whether that story is attracting the right clients for the future your firm is building. Now, some people call this a marketing audit. I know that word doesn't land well in our profession. There's too much baggage associated with an audit. This is not a compliance check. This is about clarity, alignment.
and enterprise value. It's a strategic reset just once a year. You see when firms skip this step, they drift. Messaging becomes outdated. Marketing materials misrepresent the value you actually deliver. And the worst part, you start attracting the wrong prospective clients or worse, no prospective clients at all. This work is leadership work and it should be treated with the same intentionality you give your strategic plan.
client segmentation or any growth initiative. The strong marketing review focuses on five key categories, marketing planning calendar, ideal client types and segmentation, value proposition and capability deck, marketing collateral and communications, and digital presence and systems. Okay, first off, do you actually have a marketing plan and calendar and a budget? Is it documented? Is it visible?
Ray Sclafani (02:01.066)
Is it reviewed regularly, like at least once a month, once a quarter, high performing teams are looking at this on a weekly and maybe in some cases daily basis. Or is marketing still treated like a side project on your team owned by whoever has the time. Let's talk about ideal client types and segmentation. Is your messaging built to attract your ideal future clients, not the ones who you found five years ago, are your best prospects
seeing your website or LinkedIn profiles and are they seeing themselves in your story? Can every member of your team articulate your firm's value clearly, concisely and confidently? Is there a value proposition unified across your firm and are you using a capability deck that's professional, that's current and differentiated or is it a dated PDF nobody uses? Number four is about marketing collateral and communications.
So ask yourself, what about our outreach materials? Are they aligned with their voice, the message we wanna be delivering and the priorities of the future clients you seek to attract? Or are you still relying on generic content from years ago that does not reflect who you've become? Then the last piece is the digital presence in the systems you're using. So is your website delivering leads or just information?
Does Google think you've turned off because you haven't updated it in a while? Do you track lead sources? Like is your CRM segmented to support targeted outreach and follow-up? If you're in any of these five areas, you're not just leaking opportunity, you're stalling growth. Depending upon the size of your team, this review could look a little bit different. So for example, some teams have large marketing apparatuses, some teams outsource all their marketing.
Some teams have hired an internal marketing coordinator or in-house marketer. However your structure is, make sure this is not a solo project. It requires collaboration across your advisory team, leadership and operations. Marketing should not be one person's job. It's how the whole firm shows up. How you attract, engage and retain the clients you want to serve. The best in the business make this review a shared conversation.
Ray Sclafani (04:23.192)
They communicate broadly. They make sure that the messaging is aligned internally before they ever push it out externally. Because when marketing is not owned across the team, it creates this disconnect. One advisor says one thing, another one says something else, and then the client is wondering, well, who's this business? What are they really designed to serve? Once the review is complete, you want to identify three to five marketing priorities for like the next 90 days.
The bigger your team, the more priorities you can take on, but you don't want to take on like 20 things. You can't focus everywhere and not everything at once. So high impact moves that will strengthen your marketing engine and sharpen your voice is what you're aiming for. Let me give you a few examples. Maybe it's as simple as refreshing your capability deck with new visuals and messaging. Maybe it's rewriting your value proposition. So you reflect your current service model.
Or maybe you need to launch a focus campaign to a niche client group representing your future ideal client. Perhaps you need to use CRM more effectively, optimize tags to track lead sources and follow those leads through your pipeline on conversion to new clients. Maybe it's tightening your website language to speak directly to that future ideal client. For each of these priorities, you want to document and then measure, hey, what's the specific outcome we're aiming for?
What's the expected payoff, the visibility, the engagement, the referrals, the new clients? What's the timeline and budget and who's accountable for the execution? Marketing doesn't need to be perfect, but it does need to be intentional and it needs to be owned. With each episode, we provide a few coaching questions so you can reflect on the episode with your team. Today, there are three. First, when was the last time your team had an honest conversation about what's working and what's not?
in your marketing? Number two, what story is your current messaging telling? Is it too generic? Is it not specific enough? Does it reflect the firm you've become, the one you were five years ago, or where you're headed? And number three, which are the marketing priorities if executed well in the next 90 days would position your firm for smarter, more strategic and intentional growth?
Ray Sclafani (06:48.066)
Let me know if you'd like a matching worksheet or a facilitation guide that we can share with you and your team as you approach this marketing audit. Just click on the link in the show notes. Well, thanks for tuning in and that's a wrap. Until next time, this is Ray Sclafani. Keep building, growing and striving for greatness. Together, we'll redefine what's possible in the world of wealth management. Be sure to check back for our latest episode and article.