I know many advisors and money managers. They are highly clever, hardworking friends. Yet some of them still do this stuff. It irks me, vexes me, drives me up the wall. These 5 marketing tactics should be re-considered, or avoided altogether.

5 Marketing Tactics to Avoid

1. Cold calls

Does anybody really like a cold call? I guess it can potentially help in the long run, but it seems alot of work.

I found this hubspot infographic and article about how poorly cold calls are in terms of value for your time. Essentially, 2% of all calls become meetings. Ouch!

2. Snail mail

For financial advisors and money planners I do not see snail mail being effective.

I would only be sending snail mail if it was for billable hour type purposes, not for marketing.

Food for thought: I know in some industries snail mail is still very important. Like in real estate. When someone buys a house from an agent, it is best practice for the agent to snail mail all the neighbors. Why? To let them know how much they could sell their house for.

3. News and mag ad print

This costs money. Probably big money. It is also hard to measure the effectiveness. If you are going to spend on ads, I would do it online or on television.

Seriously, think about this for a moment: magazines are literally filled with 50+ ads in them. Do you think this still works nowadays?

You can usually see the rate cards for purchasing the ads online. Look for these to see yourself how much these types of ads all cost.

4. Buying leads

Buying leads is a bad idea. Do you like getting unsolicited (aka annoying) calls from someone that you don't know? Probably not.

Aside from ethics, it is probably illegal where you are. As a result, most reputable email providers (mail chimp for example) also have numerous safeguards to catch these.

Here is another good hubspot article about why you shouldn't attempt to do this.

5. Website / SEO

One theme I hear often is that advisors wish they could spend as little time as possible on web and SEO endeavors. They want to spend their time on what they know how to do.

My advice to mitigate this is to make sure of two things:

1. Make it 110% sure that if someone were to google the name of your business, that they would find you right away. If this isn't the case try to fix it asap.

2. Make sure your site is easy to navigate, looks decent and has some ways to contact you on it.

If you have these ducks in a row, you will be way ahead of most.