This advice comes from Jon Camrud of Camrud Design, Inc., a small personal service, design, marketing and advertising firm in Denver, Colorado. We provide promotional services that benefit you as an independent financial representative on a fee basis.
Liberty Partners, in conjunction with Camrud Design has created pre-approved marketing and advertising materials for it’s representatives. These include letterhead, business card, and envelope layouts; a brochure layout. Our automated ordering site will be ready soon.
We also work with a web site provider with pre-approved formatting and content for you to personalize, should you choose to have your own site, independent of www.LibertyPFS.com.
As a registered rep, you may also create any marketing pieces that you feel will be beneficial to your business. These pieces must be approved by Liberty Partners management prior to making them public. Contact Jon Camrud at Camrud Design (303-750-6114), to implement your ideas, or to retain him for marketing and advertising.
Successful Advertising and Marketing
The idea with advertising your business is to be consistent in your design and methodical in your approach. The most important thing is to get your name out to the public. If people don’t know you are there, they can’t use your services!
Some proven advertising methods:
- Yellow Pages Advertising
- Sponsorships in high school sports programs, or in gyms and sports fields
- Sponsorships of high school or local college music departments
- Newspaper Ads
- Direct Mail Advertising
- Google Local Advertising (Places, and Pay Per Click)
- Sponsor community events
- Embroidery or screen printed clothing
Print Advertising
It is more effective to run the same ad many times than to run a significantly different ad each time. The message can be slightly different each time, but the format, must remain the same. Print advertising is a long term proposition. It is not effective to run one or two ads. People must see it consistently over time, so they remember you when they are ready to commit.
Direct Mail Marketing
Start with a smaller piece like a postcard. Mailing one postcard to your target audience is a waste of money. Direct mail marketing, to be effective, must be repetitive. Mail your first postcard and follow it up a week later with another. Then two weeks later, and once a month for at least six months until they bite. If they haven’t bitten in that time, drop them from your list.
Online Advertising
Many business people think that Google is for national advertising. While it can be used that way, it is very effective for local advertising. When setting up your campaign you have choices not only in what geographic location the ad is shown, but also in what key phrases you use. Many people type in the name of the town they are in when searching.
Google is effective because people who search on Google are generally ready to buy right away, and they are typing into searches exactly what they want to buy!
Google’s (and Bing/Yahoo) pay-per-click programs are excellent for independent reps. These are the ads you see on the right side of Google search results screens. You can target the client-type you want, and the location. For example, you may advertise to be shown only for “Denver Financial Planners” or “Reno Retirement Consultants” and not pay for people looking for college planning.
It only costs about $150 to have Camrud Design research the best keywords for your business, and create your campaign(s), depending on how many terms you want to found with. Ask about getting $100 of free click credits!
The best part about pay-per-click advertising is that we can set a daily budget and change it any time, and adapt as your business grows. We can also bid on each key phrase individually, so if you want more emphasis on one product over another, we can do it. We can pause it too, without penalty.
Beware however, Google and Bing can be cost you more if you don’t know the tricks to setting up your account with negative keywords, geographic limits, and types of ads. Always use a professional consultant, they pay for themselves in saved click fees! Contact Jon Camrud for a more detailed explanation of what you can do with Google.
Budgeting for Marketing Your Business
Advertising is not cheap. A general guideline for advertising expenditure is to spend 15% – 25% of what you want to gross in income. So, if you expect to make $100,000 this year, plan on spending $15,000 in marketing and advertising. This percentage will go down as your career progresses because it costs less to retain existing clients than to find new ones. Also, the less you make, the higher percentage will need to be invested. Yes, invested. Your advertising is an investment, not just an expense.
