A Guide to Marketing your Businessfor Financial Brokers

How to develop and deliver a structured

and creative marketing plan to boost the

income levels of your business.

This booklet is sponsored by Irish Life.

The Financial Broker

This report is a guide to Marketing Planning for Financial Brokerswho are Members of P.I.B.A. The Professional Insurance BrokersAssociation of Ireland

Irish Life are delighted to be partnering with PIBA insponsoring this guide to Marketing your Business for FinancialBrokers.

The last few years have been tough so we have consistentlychallenged ourselves to be your number one supporter bycoming up with supports to help you develop your business inan easy and profitable manner.

We believe that this guide to digital marketingcompliments this vision and will be a valuable guide toassist you in an easy to understand style.

eBusiness has become part of every day life for small businesses and their customersand hopefully this guide will demonstrate how Digital Marketing can complimentyour existing sales and prospecting process.

While most life and pension clients don’t buy online, many do search online beforedeciding whether to talk to someone and to whom, and we believe that eBusinessused correctly can be an enabler for you and your business.

We hope you enjoy this guide, and we look forward to continue to working withyou to demonstrating why Irish life is your number one supporter

This guide was developed to assist PIBA members in developing and delivering theirmarketing activities. It focuses on the development of a marketing plan and the

delivery of traditional marketing activities, and should be read in conjunction withPIBA’s “A Guide to Digital Marketing and Social Media Planning”. ”.

Tony LawlessGeneral Manager Brokerage

Irish Life

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Sales and compliance are uppermost on PIBA members’minds – specifically too little sales and too muchcompliance. Compliance will likely be a permanentfocus of PIBA into the future but we felt it wasimportant to address the area of marketing and salesgiven the challenging economic environment. This isthe reasoning behind these guides.

In this guide, Eamonn Twomey gives a comprehensiveguide to what might be called “traditional” marketingfor Financial Brokers. Much of this you will know, butthe guide will enable you to comprehensively reviewand refresh your marketing in a structured way. Youmay also find some new ideas and inspiration to get into gear.

In the complementary ‘Guide to Digital Marketing and Social MediaPlanning’, Noel Keogh gives a comprehensive guide to digital marketing andsocial media. Many of these methods are mainstream (email and websites),whilst others are aimed at the next generation down. However, FinancialBrokers will get clear guide and overview of the area which will enable you tomake the appropriate strategic decisions about use of these methods in yourbusiness.

Lastly, we have a guide to compliance in marketing. This gives an outline ofthe Consumer Protection Code and Data Protection rules in relation tomarketing. It is vitally important that any marketing conducted complieswith the rules in this area.

I would urge you to read all three documents and write a brief marketingplan for your business for the next 12 months. Most importantly you shouldresolve to take action in a constant and structured way, whilst continuallyre-assessing your methods to see what best works for your firm.

I believe these documents will be a valuable resource for Financial Brokers.PIBA would like to thank the contributors and Irish Life for their assistanceand support with this project.

Diarmuid Kelly

CEO, PIBA

Diarmuid Kelly- Chief Executive (PIBA)

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contentsAbout the author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Executive Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Part 1 – The Marketing Planning Process

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5The Planning Process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7The Research Phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Market Positioning and Guiding Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15Clarifying your Marketing Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Part 2 – The Marketing Toolbox

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20Doing the Housekeeping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21The Marketing Activities Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23The Benefits and Pitfalls of each Marketing Activity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Part 3 – Completing the Marketing Plan

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

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About the author

Eamonn TwomeyEamonn Twomey established StepChange, a marketing andstrategy solutions business for financial brokers, in 2011.For the previous 27 years, Eamonn worked in a variety ofsenior sales and marketing roles in the broker channel inboth the UK and Ireland with Irish Life and Friends First.StepChange offers a unique combination of knowledgeof the financial broker environment overlaid with salesand marketing expertise.

StepChange has developed a marketing planning mechanism specifically forthe financial broker market, a methodology that enables StepChange and thebroker to collaboratively develop creative, deliverable and results-drivenmarketing plans for the broker’s business. The focus is consistently on thebottom line impact that the plan will deliver. StepChange also then workswith financial brokers to deliver the activities under the plan to ensure thatmaximum impact is achieved, having deep experience in the delivery of thefull mix of both offline and online activities by financial brokers.

You won’t waste your valuable time having to explain the ins and outs of theindustry. In fact, StepChange will bring important insights that can addhugely to a broker’s activities and has experience of what does and doesn’twork. What will this result in? Gaining a greater understanding of yourbusiness, you’ll end up delivering the right activities, based on the specificmarketing objectives of your own business in a timely and cost effective way.

In addition, StepChange works with financial brokers and life assurancecompanies, addressing a broad range of commercial challenges in the areas ofstrategy, sales and distribution and marketing.

www.stepchange.ie

4StepChange Ltd, Kinnitty, Thormanby Road, Howth, Co. Dublin

t +353 1 8396972, m +353 86 2519895, e info@stepchange.ie

Eamonn Twomey

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Executive SummaryAs financial brokers struggle against the backdrop of Ireland’seconomic woes, they face the day-to-day challenges of new clientsbeing harder to find, existing clients being harder to hold onto andeverybody being more price sensitive. However, brokers realise thatthe response to these challenges can lie within their own control andthat marketing their business effectively is central to this response.

To market your business effectively, you must avoid just diving in anddoing marketing activities. Instead you must have a robust plan that isappropriate for your business in the current market environment. Thisguide takes you in detail through a robust marketing planningmethodology to enable you to develop a structured marketing planfor your business.

This planning process includes an initial research phase to becompleted. This encompasses understanding the medium termobjectives of your business, analysing the external impacts on yourbusiness over which you’ve no control, understanding what makesyour business different to the rest and clarifying who your targetaudiences are. Each of these is covered in detail in this guide. Oncethis research is completed, you then need to articulate how you wantyour financial brokerage to be perceived by the external world – yourmarket positioning. After this, it is time to identify the actualobjectives of your marketing plan.

The cornerstone of a robust marketing plan is crystal clarity of yourmarketing objectives. Once you are clear on what your goal is, it’srelatively straightforward to identify the right set of activities toachieve the goal. The different activities then need to be considered interms of their appropriateness for your plan, examining the benefitsand pitfalls of each. Finally the plan needs to be captured in astructured fashion and in a suitable format to ensure that it becomesa living document into the future.

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part 1The Marketing Planning Process

IntroductionFinancial brokers are faced with a wide range of challenges today: astuttering economy, increased overheads and costs in your businessesin areas such as compliance and insurance, and consumer confidenceand spending on the floor. That’s not mentioning the wealthdestruction, falling incomes and sharp rise in unemployment thatwe’ve seen in recent years.

These are examples of really important factors that are impacting thesuccess of financial brokers’ businesses today. As a result, thecommercial environment for brokers is hugely difficult in comparisonto the Celtic Tiger era. New clients are harder to find, existing clientsare harder to hold on to, everybody is more price sensitive. However,the one valuable service that is now needed by clients more than everis the impartial and independent advice that you offer. The challengefor brokers today is to have a compelling business proposition forboth existing and prospective clients, and then to get out and tellthem about it! That’s where this guide comes in…

The purpose of this guide is to help you bring your proposition tomarket in the most compelling way possible for your variousaudiences. It will give you the mechanisms to develop a really robustmarketing plan for your business and will then give you an overviewof the benefits and drawbacks of a range of marketing tools that youmight potentially use to achieve your marketing objectives.

The end result? By following this roadmap, you’ll have a much greaterlevel of insight into your business, you will gain much more claritywith regard to what you’re trying to achieve through your marketingefforts and you will then be enabled to identify the right set of toolsto achieve your objectives. This should result in a greater return fromyour marketing activities with less wastage of time and money.

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This first part of the guide is focused on the planning stage and how togo about developing a robust marketing plan for your business. Theaim of this section is to help you to identify the right set of marketingactivities for your business. The key to achieving this is to be crystalclear on the objectives of your marketing efforts.

To help you identify these objectives, this section of the guide coversthe initial research phase that you need to complete to provide a firmfoundation for the plan, before giving you pointers on developing aunique market positioning for your firm and identifying some workingprinciples to support this positioning.

Based on the findings of your research phase and your desired marketpositioning, this section of the guide will then help you to identify theall-important objectives of your marketing plan. Once you are veryclear on the objectives, it’s actually quite straightforward to identifythe right set of activities to implement to help you achieve yourobjectives – this is covered in detail in Part 2 of this guide. Part 3 ofthis guide then covers the actual capturing of the plan.

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The Planning ProcessSo where do you start? In order to achieve a robust marketing plan,you need a robust planning process. The diagram below sets out aprocess to be used, the aim of which is to stop you from just diving inand starting to deliver marketing activities! Instead the key to asuccessful marketing plan is gaining clarity of the objectives of theplan. Once you know what it is that you want to achieve, only thencan you identify the right set of marketing tools to be used by yourbrokerage.

By completing three preliminary phases: the Research Phase, yourMarket Positioning and your Guiding Principles, you will ensure thatyou identify the right marketing objectives for your business. As aresult of putting in this time at the outset, your chances of developinga robust plan for your business will be hugely increased. So now we’llexamine each of the steps of the planning process in a bit more detail.

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The Research PhaseCentral to the development of a successful marketing plan is ensuringthat it takes account of the wider market circumstances, theattributes of your particular business and indeed the businessobjectives and target audiences of your business. The research phase isreally important as it provides a firm foundation for the marketingplan and ensures that the plan is based on carefully considered reality,rather than ‘gut feel’! This research phase is really worth the effort –in reality you should probably allow 3-4 hours without distractions tocomplete this properly. To achieve the desired results, the followingfour areas should be examined:

1. Medium-term Objectives

The first step in the research phase is to articulate and write downwhat the medium-term objective of your business is, over a 3-5 yeartimeframe. This goal should be very clear and unambiguous. Toachieve this, make sure it is a SMART goal:• Specific – What is it that you want to achieve? Is it a number of

clients, income levels, geographical reach?

• Measurable – What is the actual figure that you want to achieve?

• Attainable – Make sure the goal is achievable! While it should bestretching, a completely unrealistic goal will end up being ignored.

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• Relevant – This goal is the future of your business! Make sure thatthe goal truly reflects where you want your business to be in thefuture.

• Time-Bound – Have a clear date set for when the goal should beachieved. This will ensure a real focus for everyone workingtowards the goal.

Why is it important to identify this objective? First of all, it gets youthinking about where you want your business to be in the future – infact most brokers complete this stage quite quickly as they intuitivelyknow where they want their business to be! Secondly though, thisgoal becomes an important sanity check for the marketing objectivesto ensure that they are relevant. For example, if your medium-termobjective is about deriving a specific income level from your existingclients, there’s a problem if your marketing objectives are aroundincreasing your brand profile nationally!

2.The External Environment

The next part of the research phase is to understand what’s going onoutside of your brokerage and the impact of these events on yourbusiness. There are a lot of factors impacting your business over whichyou have little or no control. However, you ignore these factors atyour peril as you could miss some golden opportunities; or indeed, onthe other hand, you could be put out of business by ignoring theworld outside of your own office! To examine these external impactson your business, an often-used tool is one called ‘PEST Analysis’. Thistool enables you to examine external impacts on your business (overwhich you’ve little or no control) across the 4 dimensions of:

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So how might each of these dimensions affect the world of a financialbroker? Some examples might include:

Political• What impact will the Consumer Protection Code and other

regulatory and compliance requirements have on your business?

• If your business is very focused on pensions, what impacts will thelevy, changes to tax relief (past and future) and thresholds have onyour business?

Economic• Where do you believe the market cycle to be? This will influence

the advice you give and indeed should influence your marketingapproach and messages.

• Marketing in a recession is very different to marketing in a boom!You need to consider all of the impacts of the current recession onyour clients and how these translate, both in terms ofopportunities (yes, there are some!) and challenges for yourbusiness – unemployment, redundancies, income reductions etc.While they are negative factors, consumers need advice on how tomanage their new financial situation.

Social• There is overall a negative view of our industry. While you can’t

change this on your own, you can influence your own clients’thinking in this regard. Do you cross your fingers and ignore this ordo you actively work on building a trust proposition for yourclients?

• As a result of the financial turmoil of recent years, the focus hasmoved in most clients’ minds from asset accumulation toconsolidation and hanging on to what they have. It is reallyimportant that this feeds through into your advice and marketingproposition.

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Technological• Technology is a fantastic enabler to giving the world a view of your

business, and the Internet is now a primary research tool forprospective customers. Is your web presence sufficiently strong toleverage this opportunity, or is it in fact a disincentive for clientsto do business with you?

• Technology offers great communication possibilities with yourclients and prospective clients through your website, email, socialmedia etc. How are you leveraging these opportunities?

These are just a very small sample of the types of external impacts onyour business. The piece of work to be completed by you here is toidentify the full list of relevant impacts under each of the fourdimensions and then to consider how these are impacting upon yourbusiness in particular. A number of these will then feed through intothe next research section, understanding the particular attributes ofyour own business.

3.Your Business Profile

This is a critically important part of the research phase, identifying theparticular attributes of your business and what makes you differentfrom the other financial brokers that you are competing with! Toachieve this, you should complete a SWOT Analysis, which looks atyour particular business in terms of:

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The strengths and weaknesses will typically be factors that are internalto your business while the opportunities and threats will typicallyrelate more to factors specific to your business but in the externalmarketplace. The textbooks will suggest that you should only includefactors that are unique to your business; however this is difficult forfinancial brokers who are surrounded by such a high number ofcompeting firms. As a result, you should identify factors thatdifferentiate you from your typical competitors – these could be otherfinancial brokers in your area, others chasing the same target marketetc. At the other extreme, this is not an exercise in simply listing everyarea that you are good and bad in. Instead only capture those factorsthat differentiate you from the rest. Some examples of areas toconsider include:

• Strengths / Weaknesses: Client base, brand, assets, staff, servicecapability, geographical presence etc.

• Opportunities / Threats: Access to specific client groups, introducerrelationships, other financial brokers, banks etc.

This part of the research phase should take up the most time by a longway, as it requires you to really examine your business in detail.

4.Target Markets

The final stage of the research phase is to identify the customer groupsthat you want to reach through your marketing plan. You cannotignore this phase and simply hope that your marketing efforts willreach your desired audience. Instead your choice of marketingactivities will be based to a large degree on who it is you are actuallytrying to reach. You will most likely have multiple target audiencesbut your challenge is to get as specific as possible about eachaudience – who they are, what their particular attributes are, can youidentify sample ‘faces’ within each audience – this will help you as youdecide the best marketing mix to reach them. Target audiencesprobably fit into 3 main categories:

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Existing Clients

For many brokers, their existing client base is the main focus of theirmarketing activities. However your client base is not onehomogenous group. You need to segment your client base alongsensible lines as you may have different marketing requirements fordifferent groups within your client base. You potentially mightsegment your client base by factors such as:• Geography

• Value to your Business

• Premium Levels

• Product Type

• Business Potential.

New Clients

It’s not enough to say you’re open to any new client. In most cases,of course you are! You need to be clear about the groups of peoplethat you are trying to target as this will help you to decide bothyour marketing objectives and your marketing activities. You mighttarget new clients by:• Geography – are you looking for clients in a particular region?

• Client Profile – are you looking for corporate clients, personallines clients etc.?

• Product Category – Are you seeking corporate pension clients tomatch your expertise?

• Client Groups / Occupations / Affinities – are you specialising inone of these areas?

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Introducers

Are there other business people in your network with whom you canbuild mutually beneficial relationships as a source of business foreach other? These of course include accountants, solicitors, generalinsurance brokers etc. If gaining business through introducers is asignificant opportunity for your business, then capture them as atarget market! You will need to build credibility and communicatewith them at least as well as you do with your end clients –otherwise these relationships will never deliver the results that youwant.

And that then is the research phase completed! Assuming this hasbeen done properly, you will now be in a position to move forwardthrough the planning process, confident in the knowledge that allrelevant factors have been considered.

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Market Positioning and GuidingPrinciplesWhile these two areas are completely inter-related, they are bestlooked at one at a time.

1.Market Positioning

A quick marketing lesson to help you understand this important area!An excellent definition of positioning is:

“Positioning is not what you do to a product; it is what you do to themind of a prospect”.Ries and Trout (1972)

We see this subconsciously in every product / brand that we touch.Ryanair is positioned as a low-cost carrier, Gucci as a luxury goodsmanufacturer; Volvo is positioned for safety. There has also beenclever repositioning by brands over the years – do you rememberwhen Lucozade was a drink for when you were sick instead of beingan energy drink?

Does this apply to financial brokers? Absolutely it does: it is vitallyimportant that you are clear on what your market positioning is / willbe. You then need to ensure that this positioning is delivered byeveryone associated with your business. Volvo’s positioning will notendure if they have significant safety issues; the same applies to you.Your positioning must be relentlessly delivered, every time. To helpyou identify and articulate the positioning of your business, you needto consider questions such as:

• What should people think about when they see you / get in touchwith your business?

• What makes your business different?

• How do you act differently to justify this positioning?

• How do you brag about your business?

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A word of warning: don’t pick a positioning just because it’s trendy!The critical point again is that it is relevant to your business and iscredible. There is no point having a positioning that you cannotdeliver – this will just result in you being in the dreaded place ofoverpromising but under-delivering. What are potential positioningareas for financial brokers? They could include the likes of:

• Expertise in certain product lines, customer segments, areas ofthe market.

• Provision of a local service in a geographical area, beingaccessible to customers.

• A superior service proposition / quality of advice.

• A particular cost proposition / remuneration structure.

Your positioning statement should then be captured in no more than asentence or two. It shouldn’t become a mantra to be learned off byheart and parroted out to clients! Instead it should be a galvanisingstatement that succinctly describes your business and is credible toclients and to everyone else associated with your brand – yourself,your employees, in fact anybody representing your brand. Yourpositioning is as strong as the weakest link – everyone throughoutyour business must buy into it or else they will fatally undermine it.

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2.Guiding Principles

These are effectively rules that you put in place throughout yourorganisation (and with any suppliers representing your brand) tosupport your market positioning. Once you gain everyone’s buy-in tothe market positioning, the guiding principles become the rulebookthat ensures the positioning is consistently delivered. They become the‘lines in the sand’ that people are not allowed to cross, for the benefitof your brand. Typical guiding principles may be based on qualitiessuch as:

• Fairness to clients

• Professionalism

• Service Quality

• Expertise

• Focus on customer relationships.

There are of course a whole range of potential guiding principles thatmight be appropriate to your particular positioning. The key is toidentify the right ones for your business, to communicate theseconsistently and often to everyone associated with your brand and tomonitor that everyone is sticking to them. If not, get out and trainyour people again!

Remember: You need to comply with the relevant Data Protection rules.Please refer to the PIBA Compliance Marketing Guidelines.

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Clarifying your MarketingObjectivesHaving completed your research phase and having identified yourmarket positioning, you are now in a position to identify your all-important marketing objectives. If you’ve been rigorous to this point,typically you will find that the objectives for your marketing activitiessimply fall out of the work completed and are staring you in the face!However, we will now look at some typical marketing objectives forfinancial brokers.

These are probably the 6 most common objectives, with the oneshighlighted in blue being the 3 most common in the current marketenvironment. Following is a quick overview of each:

• Brand Building: Increasing the general awareness of your businessand product offerings among your target market and the widerpublic.

• Drive Sales: Converting prospects from leads into actual sales,including the sales and marketing tools to support this process.This is when you are in front of prospects.

• Drive Leads: Increasing the number of prospective clients for yourbusiness both from inbound and outbound marketing activities.Getting more people in front of you!

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• Develop Partner Relationships: Building mutually beneficialrelationships with accountants, solicitors and general insurancebrokers.

• Connect with Existing Clients: Increasing your retention of .existing clients and cross-selling opportunities.

• Change Market Positioning: Changing the positioning of yourbusiness in the eyes of your customers and the wider market. Forexample, changing from being seen as a mortgage broker to beingrecognised as a financial broker.

Some of your marketing objectives may be appropriate for only partof your target market. That’s ok! For example, you might have anobjective such as, “To implement a client engagement programme forour top 50 clients”.

The important task now is to identify the right objectives for yourbusiness. While you might think that 5 or 6 of them are appropriatefor your business, there are undoubtedly one or two (or possiblythree) that are much higher priority. Remember that for eachobjective you will have a number of marketing activities, so identifyand focus on the important ones at this stage. As you address them,you can then look at the rest. If you try to address too manyobjectives, each with a number of marketing activities, you run therisk of being overwhelmed by the task at hand. Narrow yourobjectives down as much as possible and make your job manageable.

At this stage you are clear on what you want to achieve under yourmarketing plan. Identifying the right marketing objectives for yourbusiness is really important as it gives you the best chance ofdelivering the right set of marketing activities to achieve the desiredresults. You also can be confident that these objectives are based on asolid research platform and the desired positioning of your business.

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part 2The Marketing Toolbox

IntroductionAt this stage, you’ll be glad to know that you’ve broken the back ofdeveloping your marketing plan! Getting clarity on those all-important objectives for your plan is really the bedrock of a robustmarketing plan.

Now that you know your objectives, the next step is to identify thebest set of marketing activities to help you achieve the objectives.These will then be slotted into the plan.

In this section, the guide covers some necessary housekeeping first ofall and then each of the main marketing objectives that you are likelyto identify. For each of these objectives, there is an optimal set ofactivities to be undertaken to help you achieve the objective.

The focus of this guide is on offline marketing activities only. Somereference is made to a wide number of digital tools to be considered.These are very important tools as part of the overall marketing mix forfinancial brokers. However these have not been analysed in this guideand instead you should refer to PIBA’s “A Guide to Digital Marketingand Social Media Planning”.

Each of these offline activities is examined in turn, giving an overviewof the activity, the benefits of each and some potential pitfalls to beaware of. This will help you to identify the right set of activities foryour chosen objective and will give you some pointers on maximisingtheir impact and, in turn, your chances of success.

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Doing the HousekeepingBefore you start diving in and thinking about creative marketingactivities, it’s worth pausing for a moment. Have you considered thatevery customer interaction effectively plays a part in your marketingefforts, as it will help or hinder the positioning of your business inyour customers’ minds? As a result, it is worth quickly consideringeach of the following and deciding if you need to do some work onthem, as they could potentially undermine some of your efforts as youwork on the more exciting activities.

First Impressions Matter!

• Will a visit to your office have a positive or negative effect onvisitors? Is it a professional, tidy and clean environment?

• Is your signage good?

• How welcoming is the first person a visitor meets at your office?

• Are you proud handing over one of your business cards? Are theyfully up to date and made with good quality paper?

• Are your brand name and logo still relevant to your business andare they consistently used across all platforms?

• Are you happy with your headed paper?

• How professionally is the phone answered at your office?

• How happy are you with your website?

• How complete is your LinkedIn profile?

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How good is your data?

• Do you have phone numbers and email addresses for all of yourclients to support your marketing efforts?

• What data / results do you have from previous marketing . .campaigns?

• Do you know the source of every lead, as this should help tochoose and guide future marketing activities?

• What processes are in place to keep these lists up to date?

What Lasting Impression do you leave?

• How good are your financial advice reports, both in terms of thequality of the content and also the look and feel?

• How professional are your client review reports?

• How will your documents arrive in the post to your client? In adog-eared envelope or in a professional corporate folder?

• When presenting to a client, how professional are yourPowerPoint presentations?

As mentioned above, these are worth addressing. It probably won’tmake sense to hold off on all other marketing activities until all ofthese are remedied but they certainly should be dealt with as early aspossible.

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The Marketing ActivitiesOverviewIf you go back to the planning process for a minute (see the diagrambelow), you will see that at this stage you have achieved the key task,which is identifying your marketing objectives. The next step is toidentify the right set of marketing activities for your chosenobjectives.

As mentioned in the introduction to this section of the guide, onlinetools are now a critical component of any marketing plan, but theseare examined separately in PIBA’s “A Guide to Digital Marketing andSocial Media Planning”.

Overleaf is an overview of the main marketing activities that shouldbe considered under each of the marketing objectives. Following thisis an examination of each of the offline tools in turn.

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Marketing Activities

The Benefits and Pitfalls of eachMarketing Activity

In the “Marketing Activities Overview”, you can identify the most relevantset of potential activities for each of the objectives that you’ve defined foryour marketing plan. You’ll now see set out below some thoughts in relationto each of the offline marketing activities contained in the ActivitiesOverview.

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• Potential to get messages out to awide audience.

• Wide choice of media channels.• Opportunity to use creative

messages.• Opportunity to connect with

prospects unknown to thefinancial broker.

• Expensive – can be very!• Difficult to target effectively at

the preferred audience – noweasier online.

• Opportunity for brief messagesonly.

• Hard to measure the impact.• Very cluttered environment.

ADVERTISING

Description: Increasing brand recognition and productmessages through paid content in mediachannels including press, radio, TV, online,magazines etc.

Benefits Pitfalls

PUBLIC RELATIONS (PR)

Description: Provides exposure to your audience usingtopics of public interest and news items thatdo not require payment to the mediaprovider. Benefits Pitfalls

Benefits Pitfalls

• High credibility as viewed asgaining exposure based on meritsof message alone.

• Can allow lengthy and complexmessages to be discussed andexplained.

• Highly engaging if communicatedwell.

• Can enable ongoing relationshipswith media (newspapers, radiostations etc.).

• Opportunity to connect withprospects unknown to thefinancial broker.

• Free!

• Takes a lot of time to cultivateeffective ongoing mediarelationships.• Often a ‘live’ environment –potential for ‘curve balls’ andfewer second chances!• Choice of right medium is critical.• Hard to measure the impact as nodirect results.• Competition – Many ambitious-3financial brokers seeking theseopportunities!

• Great opportunity to showcasethe capabilities of your business.

• Gain captive time with yourtarget market.

• You can select messages that willenhance your business and salesopportunities.

• Great networking opportunity.• Potential to introduce new clients

to your business.

• Can be hard to attract the rightaudience – content and speakersmust be right.

• If executed poorly, will reflectpoorly on your business.

• Speaker quality and their messageis key – if poor, this will turn offyour audience.

• Often no direct link to sales – canbe expensive.

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SEMINARS / CONFERENCES

Description: Inviting your target audience to hearpresentations of relevant content as decidedby you, delivered by a range of speakersincluding yourself.

Benefits Pitfalls

• Opportunity to meet groups ofpeople within your target market.

• Opportunity to showcase yourbusiness to individuals within thenetworking groups.

• Gain captive time with yourtarget market.

• Opportunity to build mutuallybeneficial relationships with otherbusinesspeople.

• Potential to introduce new clientsto your business.

• Some people find it hard work!• You must find the right groups –

not just groups of financialbrokers!

• You’ll fail if you are only lookingto ‘take’ from the group. Youmust ‘give’ too!

• You must perfect your marketpositioning to differentiateyourself from the rest.

• Can be a slow burn turning yournetwork into clients.

NETWORKING

Description: Where groups of like-minded business peopleidentify, create, or act upon businessopportunities for the gain of members.

Benefits Pitfalls

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• Opportunity to say thank you toclients.

• Opportunity to learn more aboutyour clients, outside of a formalbusiness meeting.

• Opportunity to engage thepartners and children of clients.

• Opportunity to ‘stick in theirminds’.

• Quality of the event is important– poor quality will reflect poorlyon your brand.

• Devil is in the detail – smallfactors stick in the mind ofguests, positive and negative!

• Mix of guests is important.• No direct link to sales and can be

expensive.

CORPORATE ENTERTAINING

Description: Thanking existing clients by inviting them to asocial occasion, either individually or as partof a wider group event.

Benefits Pitfalls

CORPORATE PRESENTATIONS

Description: Similar to a Corporate Brochure, developing atop quality presentation that introduces yourbusiness when presenting to new clients.

Benefits Pitfalls

• A very professional introductionto your advice meetings with newclients.

• A very useful ‘scene setter’ thatcan help to put clients at ease.

• Can be easily tailored fordifferent clients.

• Can be easily tailored for usewith potential businessintroducers.

• Quality again is the criticalfactor. Done well, corporatepresentations are a real asset,done badly, they are a detractor.

• You need to consider yourpresentation method – paperslides, laptop, iPad?

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• A very professional introductionto your business with prospectiveclients.

• A reminder to existing clients ofthe wider capabilities of thebusiness.

• A showcase of yourprofessionalism with potentialbusiness introducers.]

• A professional ‘take away’ forcallers to your office.

• Quality is critical. This is yourprofessional showcase so it mustbe excellent quality.

• They can be expensive – costsinclude design and print andmaybe photography.

• May need to be updated aspersonnel / product set / businessfocus changes.

CORPORATE BROCHURES

Description: Developing a highly visual, top qualitybrochure that showcases the people, skillsand capabilities of your business.

Benefits Pitfalls

• Will help to promote a particularproduct line with prospectiveclients.

• Very useful as backgroundinformation on a product line forclients.

• Will demonstrate professionalismin your approach, better than ahandful of fliers!

• A strong asset to a wider productsales campaign.

• They can date quite quickly aslegislation, tax rates etc. change.

• They can be time consuming andcostly to produce.

• Important to get the balanceright between overly technical(difficult to read) and overlysimple (not informative enough).

PRODUCT BROCHURES

Description: Brochures developed by you or by lifecompanies to promote the features andbenefits of particular product lines.

Benefits Pitfalls

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• Paints a very positive picture ofyour business among a wideaudience.

• Can build a strong spirit amongemployees and staff throughengagement in the CSR initiative.

• May attract new clients whoprefer dealing with sociallyresponsible brands.

• Can yield positive PR benefits.

• No direct link to sales.• May have a cost in terms of time

or money, depending on theinitiative.

• Important to associate yourbrand with the right initiative /charity.

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY (CSR)

Description: Delivering a positive impact through yourbusiness on the environment, consumers,employees, community or charities.

Benefits Pitfalls

• Will give you exposure toparticipants / supporters of thesponsored event / team.

• Will be seen by a wider audiencethrough promotion of the event /team.

• Can yield corporate entertainingopportunities with key clientsand employees.

• Can yield positive PR benefits.

• No direct link to sales – can behard to measure the benefits ofsponsorships.

• Can be very expensive.• Important to associate your

brand with the right event /team.

• Important to leverage everyopportunity presented by thesponsorship – it will be up to youto do so!

SPONSORSHIPSDescription: A fee paid (typically in sports, arts,

entertainment or causes) in return for accessto the commercial potential associated withthe body / event.

Benefits Pitfalls

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• Very focused on a particularproduct line.

• Will engage all salespeople as thecatalyst for a push on aparticular product.

• The message will arrive as youdesire it to be received.

• Very measurable in terms ofresponse rates.

• Quality again is key. Poor qualitywill be seen as junk mail / spamand will detract from yourbusiness.

• Rigorous follow-up must happen.• Can be costly, particularly for

offline campaigns.

DIRECT MARKETING CAMPAIGNS

Description: Contacting clients or prospective clientsdirectly by mail / email to promote aparticular product or service.

Benefits Pitfalls

• Can be a good source for leadgeneration.

• You have complete control of themessage / products to bepromoted.

• Different scripts / approaches canbe tested to optimise chance ofsuccess.

• Very measurable results.

• You are outsourcing so risk poorrepresentation of your brand.

• Leads generated can be poorquality resulting in wasted timeand money.

• To improve chances of success,you need to engage and testdifferent scripts etc.

TELESALES

Description: Where an agent solicits potential customersto buy products or services, either over thephone or through a subsequent face to faceappointment scheduled during the call.

Benefits Pitfalls

Remember: In relation to Direct Marketing, you need to comply with the relevantData Protection rules. Please refer to the PIBA Compliance Marketing Guidelines.

Remember: In relation to Telesales, you need to comply with the relevant DataProtection rules. Please refer to the PIBA Compliance Marketing Guidelines.

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• Can yield important informationabout your clients and theirthinking.

• They offer a great opportunity toengage your clients with thefindings.

• Can provide very useful materialfor seminars / conferences.

• They provide excellent PRopportunities.

• Poorly prepared surveys willannoy participants and result inlow participation.

• Doing the survey is not enough –you must present back thefindings for full impact.

• Can be expensive to see the fullprocess through.

CUSTOMER SURVEYS

Description: Inviting a group of contacts to participateindividually in a survey to enable you topresent back findings in relation to thegroup as a whole.

Benefits Pitfalls

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part 3Completing The Marketing Plan

IntroductionIn this final, short section of the guide, you’ll see the important itemsto capture in the actual writing of your marketing plan – at the end ofthe day we all know that if it isn’t written down, it won’t happen!

In the author’s humble opinion, the days of 20 page marketing plansare over! There are countless such plans gathering dust in desks andon shelves in financial brokers’ offices everywhere. An effectivemarketing plan is a short, action oriented document that clearly setsout what needs to be done and is developed in such a way that it iseasy to review its effectiveness on an ongoing basis.

This section sets out what should be included in your marketing planto make it effective. The good news is that if you follow this approach,you’ll get your plan on to a maximum of 2 pages!

The real work then begins – implementation!

1.Priority

You first of all need to decide which are the most critical activities todeliver above all others. They may not be the most urgent activities,but over the lifetime of your plan (probably 12 to 18 months), they arethe most important. These ones must happen!

2.Estimated Cost

You need to estimate the cost of each activity as you probably have alimited marketing budget available. This might take some ‘ringingaround’! You then need to compare the likely cost of the activitieswith your available budget. Often there will be a shortfall, and this is

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where choices must be made. Obviously your high priority activitiesshould remain on the plan. You then need to look at the rest andchoose whether you ‘water down’ the activities under each of yourmarketing objectives or, indeed, remove one of the marketingobjectives for the lifetime of this plan.

You should also consider the cost in terms of the time required todeliver the activities. Will you have this time? If not, you may want tooutsource this work, which you will need to budget for.

3.Delivery Date

When is the actual activity to be delivered? If it is a long project, itmight also be worth capturing when you will start working on theactivity and some interim milestones. This is really important as it willkeep you focused on the activity.

Some tips? Put in an actual date, not just a month (or worse still“Quarter 4”)! Also make sure that these dates find their way into yourcalendar or to-do list.

4.Delivery Responsibility

Who is actually going to take responsibility for delivery of theactivity? This must be one person’s name! There needs to be a singleowner for each activity to make sure they get delivered. Sharedresponsibility creates ambiguity and things start falling throughcracks.

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5.Measure of Success

The most important point is kept until the end: what gets measuredgets done. If you don’t set target outcomes for each of your marketingactivities and then track the results against those targets, how willyou know whether it was successful and if it should be repeated in thefuture?

This is where marketing gets a really bad name! As John Wanamaker,considered the father of both the modern department store andmodern advertising, said,

“I know that half of my advertising dollars are wasted … I just don’tknow which half.”

No, it’s not always possible to link your marketing activities back tosales but there are a wide range of other targets and metrics that youcan use to measure the success or otherwise of each of the activitiesthat you’ve chosen. These include measures such as:

• New client numbers

• Levels of cross sales

• Customer satisfaction measures

• Website traffic

• Online presence

• Delivery of plan.

If you include each of your chosen activities and complete the above 5areas for each, you now have a very robust marketing plan!

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ConclusionHopefully this guide has given you a methodology to ensure you canmaximise the impact of your marketing efforts. To ensure success, you musthave a robust plan, and the cornerstone of a robust plan is crystal clarity ofyour marketing objectives. Once you have the objectives in place, the choiceof the right activities will easily follow. These activities then need to beplanned and delivered in a structured fashion.

To ensure you have identified the right objectives for your marketing plan,it’s really important that these are based on your required marketpositioning. Again this is how others will perceive your business so it isimportant that this is based on solid foundations. These foundations are builtby the completion of the research phase at the outset – understanding themedium term objectives of your business, analysing the external impacts onyour business over which you’ve no control, understanding what makes yourbusiness different to the rest and clarifying who your target audiences are.Each of these is covered earlier in this guide.

Now a new challenge begins, and that is implementing your plan creativelyand rigorously to fully leverage the planning work that you’ve completed.This requires commitment to the plan and meticulous follow-up. Don’t file theplan away! Keep it visible to ensure that you or whoever is delivering theplan on your behalf remains on track to ensure you maximise the results fromthe plan.

Finally, remember help is always at hand. There are many dedicatedmarketing people (including the author!) available who would be delighted toadvise you or indeed help you in the development and delivery of your plan.

The very best of luck!

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