How Financial Advisors can communicate during a crisis

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Email | RSS

In this blog/podcast I am going to talk about a Crisis Marketing Strategy for Financial Advisors during COVID-19. There is a specific strategy with 3 steps that I am going to discuss and you’re going to love it!

For those of you who are new to my blog/podcast, my name is Sara. I am a CFA® charterholder and I used to be a financial advisor. I have a weekly newsletter in which I talk about financial advisor lead generation topics and it is best described as “fun and irreverent.” Please subscribe.

So if you’re looking for some straight up talk then you’ve come to the right place!

The 3 step Crisis Marketing Strategy for Financial Advisors during COVID-19

There is no better time for financial advisor prospecting than a market crisis. It’s not like I’m trying to make light out of a very serious situation. But the simple fact of the matter is that when we are in a crisis, people absolutely do not know what is going on. There is no point at which the value of financial advice can be higher than in a situation like that.

So to be clear, if you are wondering, how can a financial advisor get new leads at a time like this, the answer is to get an awesome Crisis Marketing Strategy for financial advisors during COVID-19.

I was actually contacted by somebody who used to be a client of mine when I was a financial advisor years and years ago, and she is like “Look, I have these retirement accounts, I have not looked at them, can I just get a meeting with you?” I had to tell her I was not in the business anymore and of course I found somebody to help her.

But my point is WHY do I hear from her now and not at any point over the last four years?

It is because this is when emotions are stirred up and people are asking questions. Be the person with the answer, be visible about it. Here is a Crisis Marketing Strategy for financial advisors during COVID-19 that will allow you to do this.

Crisis Marketing Strategy for financial advisors during COVID-19

This is a weekly sequence to follow. I suggest you start this right away. I am recommending this marketing strategy for financial advisors during COVID-19 and to all the financial advisors on my membership. This is the strategy I am recommending. A lot of detail work goes into this, and I am sure you have questions but here is the basis of it.

What is a good Crisis Marketing Strategy for financial advisors during COVID-19? There are 3 steps :

• Get List of 20 prospects
• Hold Weekly webinar
• Write Weekly newsletter about the webinar

Step #1 is to get a List of 20

The first thing is you get a list of 20 people; it could be twenty people, it could be ten, I don’t really care how many people are on the list. You don’t need a ton of them. I would not recommend more than twenty.

They should be the people you have some kind of a relationship with already. Hopefully you have been prospecting to some extent already. This could be:

• Any unsold customer
• A center of influence you haven’t been able to get business with
• Any target prospect who has maybe turned you down
• Even a target prospect that you want to talk to but have not engaged with before

It will always be better if you have had some previous relationship with the person. Maybe they are the children of certain clients of yours. It doesn’t really matter, but the point is the warmer the connection the better.

By the way, I was curious if you are enjoying my blog? Because if so, I have a book about how financial advisors can reach new clients over LinkedIn messenger.

It is called, “47 Financial Advisor LinkedIn Messages and Sequences that will NOT make you look Stupid.“ If you are a financial advisor trying to meet new clients over LinkedIn or other social media sites and you need some scripts, you can download it here.

Step #2 of the Crisis Marketing Strategy for financial advisors during COVID-19 is to hold a Weekly webinar

Now what you start doing is you set up a standing webinar. The same day every week, same time every week using a Zoom conference (which doesn’t cost anything for the first 30 minutes).

Examples would be the ‘CARES Act’ or the ‘SBA loan program – should you do it.’ This accomplishes the goal of deepening your relationships with your clients at the very least.

Here’s how you can grow your network leveraging your client base. These webinars are targeted towards your client and then you tell them if there is anyone could you please invite them that you think may benefit from knowing about the ‘CARES Act’ or the ‘SBA loan’. That is one way that you can get new prospects using the Crisis Marketing Strategy for Financial Advisors during COVID-19.

At the very least, a weekly webinar helps you to stay with your clients and deepen relationships with them, this is absolutely a defensive measure. I know a lot of advisors including most of my clients are on the attack right now, so if you think about it your clients may be getting calls. You absolutely want to be the first line of defense.

If there is a time to be doing this, it is right now. A weekly webinar does not have to cost you a fortune. Show value, be a human being, appear in front of them on video conference, and don’t be shy about this. Like I said, Zoom is free for the first 30 minutes, get an account!

Step #3 of the Crisis Marketing Strategy for financial advisors during COVID-19 is to write a Weekly newsletter

Send out a newsletter once a week to your clients and to prospects. Ideally, it should be a video newsletter. You can make the video and post it onto YouTube, and then paste the link into your newsletter so that the preview image comes up and people can click on the link to see the video.

The video can be twenty seconds long. It really doesn’t matter, keep in mind people don’t have all day. That also goes for the webinar, it can be a short and to the point webinar, or it can be a twenty minute long webinar.

People don’t have all day to be sitting around reading and listening to things okay even though they are idle and in their homes. You know they have more time than they did, but people are very occupied still. Mentally, they are stressed and anxious about all of this.

Make it a short to the point newsletter. The video in it should be short and to the point, it can be twenty seconds long. The important thing is to show up and be comforting. It is comforting to see a human face and hear a caring tone of voice. All of that. Show sympathetic body language, tone of voice, and demeanor in the video.

The newsletter should:

• Talk about some kind of useful update
• Lead into the next weeks webinar and
• Include a replay of this week’s webinar

Start doing reach outs today. Start getting people onto that client webinar.

You can accomplish this Crisis Marketing Strategy for financial advisors during COVID-19 through:

• Emails,
• Voicemails,
• Text messages,
• Social media,
• Social media messenger

Don’t be too aggressive with people because you will tick them off; just try to get them onto the webinar. Once you get them on the webinar, use it as a form of understanding where they are and of course get them to ask a lot of questions. Whenever a prospect ask you a client, they are moving closer to you and you are getting closer to closing the deal.

What is a good Crisis Marketing Strategy for financial advisors during COVID-19? Now you know!

Here is a summary of how to conduct an awesome Crisis Marketing Strategy for financial advisors during COVID-19:

• Get a list of 20
• Run a weekly webinar
• Send out a weekly newsletter that prompts people to sign up for the next webinar and offers the replay from this week

That is basically the Crisis Marketing Strategy for financial advisors during COVID-19 in a nutshell.

Show them your heart

I just wanted to say that personally I am proud to be an American, I love my country.

You may not be from America but I’m sure you love your country too, wherever that country is. And I just wanted to say for the sake of other people, you just never know whose hero you can be, you never know and I think that we need to help each other right now. We are all under siege in a battle and it really is incumbent upon all of us to extend ourselves to other people as much as possible. It is going to be a hard recovery, it is going to be hard to persist through this.

When you financial advisors execute your crisis marketing plan, show people your heart. Put your heart into it.

The more we can help other people the better, first of all you never know it when it comes back to you. People do remember and showing leadership right now is great to do in general for other people, but at the end of the day it is a heck of a benefit to you as people will remember your courage and your graciousness, and how you extended yourselves to them at a time when they really needed you or someone they know did.

Any questions about the Crisis Marketing Strategy for financial advisors during COVID-1 ?

What’d ya think? Was this helpful?

If yes…

Learn what to say to prospects on social media messenger apps without sounding like a washing machine salesperson. This e-book contains 47 financial advisor LinkedIn messages, sequences, and scripts, and they are all two sentences or less.

You could also consider my financial advisor social media membership which teaches financial advisors how to get new clients and leads from LinkedIn.

Thanks for reading. I hope you’ll at least join my weekly newsletter about financial advisor lead generation.

See you in the next one!

-Sara G