Marketing Options for Financial Advisors

Marketing your practice is one of the most important functions you need to be thinking about as a business owner. Marketing is more than acquiring new clients, it also includes consistent communication to current clients. In fact, people are 400% more likely to become a client when referred by a friend.*

Three options for marketing your business

There are three different options in the market today:

• Do it yourself (DIY)
• Full time employee (FTE)
• Outside Marketing Agency

Here’s a quick overview we’ve put together so you can evaluate your marketing options:

1. Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Marketing

Doing it yourself can mean a wide variety of things—from actually writing and publishing social media posts and client emails, to adding a technology application with pre-populated content. You may lean towards this option in an effort to reduce costs. But you may end up spending valuable attention that could be used to enhance client relationships.

• Pros:
  • No or low cost
• Cons:
  • Limited or no strategy with low efficacy
  • Burden is on you to manage compliance
  • Technology applications only offer canned content
  • High-effort, time intensive, or low return when advisor does their own writing and publishing
  • Need to create and pay for technology options for social media, email, web publishing, CRM, and reporting

2. Full Time Employee (FTE) or In-House Marketing

Hiring someone into your firm to only focus on marketing is appealing. Full control over your marketing efforts with someone who is embedded in your business can be a great thing. You have someone at your beck and call whenever you want to roll out something new or communicate with clients.

But you need to consider time for onboarding, as well as HR, salary, and benefit costs. A marketing director salary in the U.S. averages $74,000, with benefits adding almost a 40% premium. Plus, you’ll need to plan for any ancillary marketing costs for graphic design, web development, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), or advertising.

• Pros:
  • Dedicated marketing professional who reports only to you
  • In-house marketer can work on short-term objectives and long-term strategy
  • Complete brand control
  • Speed of delivery
• Cons:
  • High cost of salary and benefits
  • Difficult to find and keep qualified talent
  • Requires management, professional development, training, and onboarding
  • Requires extra budget for special projects
  • Have to invest in technology and hardware like 
    • Compliant social media tools
    • Video and photo editing software
    • Cameras, video cameras, and more
  • No senior colleagues to brainstorm with on best practices, trends, etc.

3. Outside Marketing Agency

Hiring a marketing agency is another option. Marketing agencies are focused on strategy and execution, and can plan campaigns for a practice that evolve over many months. They have a wide variety of production staff and can work on special projects with different specialists. But getting the most out of this solution means hiring someone to manage the agency or designating someone inside your firm to time manage them.

• Pros:
  • Dedicated execution
  • Full service—wide variety of skills and specialist for special projects
  • High degree of creativity and talent
• Cons:
  • High cost of at least $10,000 to $20,000 a month
  • Larger projects may be billed separately, and in addition to, the regular retainer
  • Require active daily management to get the most value out of the retainer
  • Financial services agencies are a hard-to-find specialty
  • Have to invest in technology and hardware like compliant social media tools, video and photo editing software, cameras, video cameras, and more
  • Need to manage transfer of all your creative assets like your logo, graphic elements, copy, brand information, and more
  • Timing of deliverables can be lengthy

Harness the best of all three worlds with LPL

As an LPL financial professional, you need a solution that’s in the middle—with the professionalism of an agency but the flexibility of an FTE. Fortunately, you have access to Marketing Solutions —a high-touch agency model, at a fraction of the cost.

Marketing is crucial for your practice at all times—especially when it includes communications to your current clients. With Marketing Solutions , a team of digital experts trained in LPL systems, processes, and compliance can help.

While you focus on your clients, our team will create a strategy and execute powerful growth campaigns to help your business thrive.

^{Source
" Marketing Director Salary. ," Zip Recruiter, May, 2022
" Employer Costs for Employee Compensation Summary. ," U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, March, 2022
" 7 Client Referral Ideas to Help You Get more Referrals. ," The Advisor Coach}