Whites Of Their Eyes

A recent survey showed that 70% of advisors plan to spend less than $1,000 a month on marketing.  Even as 99% of advisors say they need to improve at least one of their marketing practices.

Another indicator of advisors’ troubles with marketing is expectations:

• 52% of advisors expect 20 new clients from marketing of $1,000 to $2,000
• Only 17% of advisors would consider an investment of $1,000 to $2,000 a success if it garnered less than 11 new clients

Excuse me as I begin my tirade… ARE THEY FRIGGIN’ CRAZY!!!!!!!!!

What is the average commission on a new client?  Geez!  Even a $25,000 investment at 4% is $1,000.  And I hope most of you aren’t accepting clients with less than $25,000 minimums or you have more problems than marketing.

If you brought in two crappy $25,000 accounts you’ve made $2,000.  On a $1,000 marketing investment…now for you financial professionals out there…what kind of return is that on investment?

100%.  How long did it take you to get it?  A month (at most).

Again, you financial professionals out there…what is the annual compounded return on a 100% per month?  That number is too high for me to calculate.  Anybody able to give it to me?

How much would you invest in an investment with that kind of return?  I’d mortgage my house! Heck, I’d mortgage my mother’s house!

And yet, only 17% of advisors would think a $1,000 investment in marketing yielding 11 new clients is a success:

11 crappy $25,000 accounts at 4% commission = $11,000 in commission

$1,000 marketing investment returns AT A MINIMUM $11,000 in commission and only 17% of advisors would think that is a successful marketing campaign.

With the math and investment skills of the remaining 83% that didn’t think that was successful…it would be safe to say, I would choose one of those 17% as my financial advisor.

Guys and gals, you do the math on your clients’ investment accounts.  Why not do it on your own investment…MARKETING!

If you invest $100 and you make back $140 in a month, what should you do?  Take the $140 and reinvest and make $196…then $274…then $383…then $537…$751 just 6 months later.  Take something that is working and keep investing more in it!

Marketing only costs you money when you make less than you spent.  Otherwise, invest…invest…invest!

We’ve been speaking the last few weeks on Direct Mail.  This post I’d like to spend some time on the real reason you send out direct mail…

You don’t send direct mail to get it opened (though that is helpful).  You don’t even send it to get read (though that too is necessary).  You send it to get a response.   So how can we increase the probability of response?

The cardinal rule for getting response is making it as easy as possible for them to do what you want them to do.  If you want them to send for a free report, give them some different ways to order the free report:

• 24 hour 800 number (800 numbers almost always out pull local numbers)
• A tear off card to mail back for the information
• Better yet a pre-paid postage tear off to get it back to you
• A website to download it at

Really any way that you can think of to respond, give it to them as an option.

Another thing to keep in mind is to make sure that you give clear instructions on what they should do.  For example, if you want them to call the office, tell them who they should talk to and what they should ask for.  You want to lower the anxiety level as much as possible to encourage response.

But as important as all the above is, your offer and how it is delivered is the topmost reason you are or are not going to get a response.

You have to make sure your message is as emotional as it is logical.  You have to appeal to their desires; love, greed, fear, guilt etc.  You must also make them feel that you are talking to them and only them.  There are basically two ways that you can achieve that feel of one-to-one communication.

First and foremost is the handwritten note.  A handwritten note inherently has the feel of one-to-one communication.  It is the most intimate type of communication, even ranking higher than most conversations.

Secondly, you should be specific in describing the type of person that would most benefit from your offer.  Target your message to a target audience.  If you are selling life settlements, try:

“You have something we want and we’ll pay you more than you will believe. If you have a life insurance policy that you no longer need.  You could get 3 to 5 times what you think it is worth.”

Handwritten note:
Mary and Jim, If you have life insurance you don’t want or aren’t using, don’t cancel it…call me instead , I’ll get you a quote on what it’s worth.  I think you’ll be pleased!  XXX-XXXX

There is no doubt in my mind that if you implement the points I’ve made in the last few months on direct mail you could double your business in just two months.

Recently we talked about how to get your inexpensive direct mail read and found it was basically three things:

1. Handwritten note
2. Larger size than normal mail
3. Different size than normal mail

This week I would like to talk about a great way to get prospects and clients to respond to your direct mail.

It really is just another way of making it look different from junk mail.  Junk mail is sent to the masses and for the most part has a message that would work just as well one time of the year as another or one part of the country as another.  It is TOO general!

To get the biggest bang for your marketing buck you must:

• Personalize (use their name and your handwritten message) as much as possible.
• Make it timely (use something in the news or special date; e.g. 4th of July)

You can tie newsworthy events to an offering.  For example, a few years ago the movie “Sicko” was being promoted and discussed on one TV show after another. Why not offer a card that lets people know that if they want to know the rating of their hospital to give you a call and you’ll send them a report.

Or you can make the same offer for nursing homes!  Holy cow!  Now that is a great idea!  Think about it!  Who needs more financial help or is more acutely aware of the need for financial professional help than someone that is either entering or helping a loved one enter a nursing home!

If they request the report you simply go to www.healthgrades.com to get the report to send them with a little bit about how your help people in similar situations.

Another way to use this idea is that people are very aware of holidays and tend to be very responsive to offers linked to holidays as long as the link makes sense.

Think about tying a 4th of July card to a review of their US Savings Bonds.  What a great way to get in front of clients that have significant assets that you may be able to find a better home for.

What about using a Memorial Day card to offer a “Spring Cleaning” where you sit down with them to go through the records they need to keep and those that they can safely discard?  You could even offer a tip sheet on how long you need to keep documents.

It is really not that difficult to tie in a holiday with some service you provide if you just think about it.  If you are stumped we’re always here to help. Just give me or someone at Hoard a call and we can help you.

The last few months we have been talking about getting more return on your marketing budget by using a series of mailings or more than one type of media.

Now let’s talk about how to format your direct mail. There are two basic categories…plainly put, those that come in envelopes and those that do not.

Those that don’t come in envelopes are typically called self-mailers and they include postcards, tabbed tri-folded flyers and catalogues.  Self-mailers are generally cheaper but also more likely to be thrown out as junk mail.

So how do we utilize this much cheaper form of mailing while avoiding the hazard of having 90% of it thrown out as junk mail, by the recipient, without even a glance at it?

You have to make your direct mail offer jump out of the junk mail pile and into the curiosity pile.  You have to prevent them from throwing it in the garbage without first looking at it.  How do you do that?

There are a few ways to make inexpensive mail jump out at your prospects:

1. Handwritten note—No one can throw away a handwritten note without finding out what it is about.  They just can’t!  But keep in mind, don’t use some fake looking font but either an actual handwritten note or use a technology that is very authentic looking (beware…there are beginning to be a lot of fake looking, handwritten fonts out there now.)
2. An unusually interesting or beautiful picture on the front—People simply love pictures!
3. An unusual size or shape—Using an over size card or a card cut into an unusual shape will make it feel and look different from the other junk mail so it doesn’t get lost.

You can still get an unbelievable return on investment with the less expensive postcard type mailings if you do them right.

Doing them right means that you write a great headline, you know exactly what your goal is with the mailing and you keep it out of the junk pile.

In future updates I’ll spend a little more time talking about what you should actually put in the copy to get your prospect to act.

Last time we talked about when you have multiple contacts with your prospect or client base your success rate goes up exponentially.  You will get a higher response than just the number of contacts would explain. If you send out one piece and get a 1% response and then continue to contact them say 6 times, your response rate will not go up to 6%, but instead be closer to 12% to 21%.

It will go up far higher than simply adding the number of exposures together. A way to leverage multiple exposures even more is to use multiple media e.g. newspaper, seminars, radio, billboards, etc.  The closer together you can coordinate these different types of media, the more effective it will be. It creates a, “These guys are everywhere. They must be something big.” You have to keep in mind that not all the media will have the same response rate but instead builds the response rate as part of the total package.  Your radio show or commercial may have little or no response rate but it will cause your seminar or direct mail response rate to go up. People will say, “Hey, I know these guys!  I just heard them on the radio yesterday.” When this happens, they will be much more responsive to your direct mail offer.

Obviously, you do not have an infinite amount of money to spend on advertising in all sorts of media but there are some inexpensive ways you can use this concept of helping consumers remember who you are and thus increasing the response to all your marketing. These include:

1. Make sure all your marketing has the same look; colors, logo, layout etc.  Many advisors of making the mistake of wanting to “keep it fresh,” by constantly changing the look of what they do.  Look at what happened to Coke when they introduced New Coke.
2. If you can come up with an easy to remember slogan or tag line that you can use it really helps with word of mouth advertising.
3. Target market—you are much better being a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big pond.   Choose a group of people and hit them continually with your message instead of sending to the masses.
4. Consider hitting them with house flyers that are hand delivered by having a high school kid attach them to their doors.
5. Sponsor a local event—golf tournaments are always looking for hole sponsors or your town probably has some sort of holiday events that are looking for sponsorship.  These not only are good for the community you live in, they are excellent ways to build image and name recognition.
6. Creating a total marketing plan around these items anchored by a handwritten note campaign will have you bringing in as many clients as you want within 12 months.

Soon we will be talking some more about direct mail and how it should look to give you the highest response.  We’ll look at a couple of case studies that have been done to find the most effective layouts you can use on your direct mail.