Are advisors wasting time on marketing communications?

Broadridge Financial Solution’s acquisition announcement from last week suggests advisors might be wise to outsource some or all of their marketing-based financial communications.

Broadridge Financial Solution’s acquisition announcement from last week suggests advisors might be wise to outsource some or all of their marketing-based financial communications.

Creating this type of material is extremely time consuming, so much so that many financial services companies turn to Ext. Marketing, a Toronto company co-founded by Richard Heft and Jillian Bannister.

In five short years the two communication pros have built a business founded on quality writing easing the burden of marketing departments at big companies such as Broadridge, Mackenzie Financial, Sun Life Financial and many others.

What does this have to do with front-line advisors?

It also works with advisors helping them create content for their blogs and other written communication they share with clients online and off.

Time is money in the financial advisory business; if you’re not sitting down with clients, prospecting for new ones or figuring out the best asset allocation and portfolio construction possible you’re doing a disservice to yourself and your clients.

The argument is that advisors are best off focusing on their strengths and leaving the rest to people who know what they’re doing when it comes to financial communications.

While it’s important for advisors to express a genuine voice to clients, it’s also vital that you not get bogged down by the massive undertaking that is content creation.

“We tend to do lot of real good value-add materials for the advisor channel like PowerPoint presentations that are new and interesting,” says Heft. “We’ve created some incredible blogs for our clients.”

Heft says that the brokerage houses and dealerships don’t tend to have a lot of marketing resources available to create financial communications and when you drill down further to the bigger advisor teams, nobody on those teams is really trained as a writer and knows how to turn thoughts into interesting information.

That’s where Heft, Bannister and their team come in.

Over its five years in business they’ve managed to put together a first-rate team of writers and editors who know exactly what the industry is looking for in terms of content.

“We have some of the most senior people in the industry on our team… These guys are unbelievable writers. Most importantly they have experience in the industry. It’s not as if we’re getting copywriters from consumer packaged goods. These are all high level, high functioning financial services writers; they know the language, they understand the concepts.”

This all might sound like a commercial if it wasn’t for the fact Heft’s operating a niche business whose time has definitely come.

Stop wasting time on Marcom. You’ve got better things to do.

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