While once considered an optional part of an overall financial advisor marketing strategy, digital marketing has quickly shifted from “nice to have” to a necessary part of any successful marketing campaign. This is largely due to the advancements in technology and the ease with which people can now get online compared to the early days of the internet.
For financial advisors who want to stay relevant and visible to prospective and future clients, this means deciding between an in-house digital marketing person/team or partnering with a digital marketing agency. If your financial advisory firm is currently facing a similar decision, here are some key differentiators between these two approaches to managing your financial advisor digital marketing efforts.
As the name suggests, this option utilizes a full-time staff member (or members) to manage a financial advisory firm’s digital marketing. For smaller firms or independent financial advisors, this can often mean one more hat to wear for an existing member of the team. While this option is more cost-effective than adding an additional employee, it’s often not a sustainable long-term option.
Moreover, even hiring a full-time marketer for your financial advisory firm does not equal an in-house marketing team. This is because one or even two people can’t do all the roles necessary for successful digital marketing campaigns, which include a team of specialists from every facet of digital marketing.
For financial advisory firms choosing the in-house route, it’s important to hire the right personnel to achieve digital marketing results, while also managing expectations given the limitations of a small or one-person digital marketing team.
A digital marketing agency is a third-party provider of digital marketing services that acts on behalf of your financial advisory firm. These agencies are comprised of digital marketing specialists in a variety of disciplines, including media buying, copywriting, video production, graphic design, content curation, social media, strategy, analytics, budget management, SEO, and many other highly specific and often technical roles.
A digital marketing agency acts as an extension of your financial advisory firm, eliminating the need for any internal digital marketing staff. Financial advisory firms have a primary contact within the digital marketing agency that acts as a project manager to coordinate and streamline communication between the financial advisory firm and the digital marketing agency team members.
For some financial advisory firms, there are parts of each of the above digital marketing team models that would best fit their needs. Perhaps they have a small in-house digital marketing team but need some help growing their social presence. In some cases, hiring a digital marketing team full-time isn’t financially viable.
They may need to assign an existing team member some broad digital marketing responsibilities while passing along more labor-intensive and specialized digital marketing tasks to their digital marketing agency partner. This hybrid approach can also be beneficial for financial advisory firms that can maintain digital marketing tasks, but don’t have the bandwidth for continual professional development in digital marketing education.
If you’ve made the decision to partner with a digital marketing agency, you may find yourself overwhelmed with making yet another important choice for your financial advisory firm.
Here are some tips to help you find the best fit:
Choose a Digital Marketing Firm That Knows the Industry
The financial services industry is unique when compared to other industries such as retail and entertainment providers. Taking it a step further, financial advisory and investment firms are highly regulated and often require a nuanced approach to advertising and promotion.
Partnering with a digital marketing agency without experience in the financial services industry can result in compliance issues as well as messaging that misses the mark for your desired audience.
Find a Firm That Can Identify Your Problem Areas – And Then Fix Them
A digital marketing agency that has experience working with financial advisory firms should be able to easily identify areas that need improvement within your current financial advisory firm's digital marketing strategy.
These areas of weakness may or may not come as a surprise, but should make sense once explained. If not, you probably haven’t found the right agency yet. Finding a digital marketing partner that understands pain points and comes to the table with solutions is a must.
Consider Your Future Needs as Well as Your Current Needs
Without a crystal ball, it’s impossible to predict the future. However, with enough research and planning, it is possible to anticipate the growth and overall direction of your financial advisory firm.
With that in mind, it would be wise to consider your future needs when choosing a digital marketing agency. Better still, find an agency that can scale with your financial advisory firm’s growth. For example, if you choose to partner with a digital marketing team now, you may only need some of the services they provide to start.
However, you’ll want to still make sure the agency is able to provide anything you may need help with – now or in the future. After all, having it and not needing it is preferable to needing it and not having it!