Crowd Marketing
The crowd idea is that separate adviser firms or individuals pool resources and use their combined power to get better results.
The crowd marketing effect can be the pooling of money and budgets, sharing ideas and experience, working collaboratively or direct referral arrangements.
Marketing vs Selling vs Advising
A typical adviser will be very good at converting a prospect into a client; give an adviser a prospect and they will have a high rate of success.
The quality of advice is not in question; so the strands lead back to marketing or prospecting; this is the Achilles heel for firms and individuals.
100 clients/400 clients
Advisers tend to have capacity issues; meaning that there is an established ceiling on client numbers, which is thought to be around 100 per adviser. This varies depending on the nature of the proposition.
So, investment clients (FUM model) the 100 figure is reliable, transactional models, there is not the same ongoing review service element, so it is not so reliable.
Either which way, the advent of AI support allows for the client number/adviser to be completely re-evaluated. Advisers can expand client numbers if they learn how to manage each client relationship, so the hours spent per year reduces without any loss of quality of service.
Therefore, marketing initiatives need to recognise the model. Enhancing the client number model may be a complementary exercise.
Referrals
Most advisers have a successful referral programme which tends to be informal and organic; so a naturally arising phenomenon rather than a prescribed active marketing strand.
This is one of the great untapped potential marketing opportunities i.e. for adviser firms and individuals to create a specific referral programme.
Those few firms that have such a programme can “inform” others (e.g. a crowd advantage) of how to make this work.
Pooling Resources
Through the 8MDs site we will share with you multiple marketing ideas, how to turn falling campaigns into successful campaigns, what to avoid and watch out for, how AI will play a pivotal role, offer a series of marketing support initiatives specifically designed for the adviser business, and mange pooled marketing.