As what is inarguably the most expensive tool in a financial marketer’s tool belt, it’s critical to get advertising to financial advisors right. But far too often, advertising ends up as a misaligned, misconstrued tactic that isn’t deployed as effectively as it could be. What follows are some of the mistakes we’ve seen over the years – and how to avoid them in the future.

Unwillingness to Target Specific Advisor Segments

The Misstep: Many financial marketing advertising campaigns simply want to target the entire universe of 300,000 financial advisors. This too often leads to vanilla, cookie-cutter advertising strategies that create needless noise while capturing limited attention.

The Fix: Be willing to target a specific advisor base. This could mean specifically advertising to the RIA market or a few key geographies. Focusing opens up a world of differentiated tactics such as making a big bang at specific conferences, leveraging outdoor or radio advertising, or executing particular activations that grab your target advisors’ attention.

Taking an Either/Or Approach to Media

The Misstep: Financial marketers often debate where they should be present in their advertising – should they focus on expensive national media with a high-reach, targeted social media, or execute a deep buy with a trade publication? Many think you have to choose where to place your chips – but in reality, the answer is far more nuanced.

The Fix: All channels have specific strengths and weaknesses – and all should be considered in the mix and calibrated based on the objectives of a given campaign. The financial trade publications continue to have incredible success when it comes to direct, paid email and webinars. National media offers unparalleled broad reach that corresponds to lifts in brand awareness and consideration. And social occupies a highly targeted “land between” the two, offering a rich landscape to drive engagement with advisors.

Sleeping on Traditional Media Channels

The Misstep: Yes, we live in a digital world – but that doesn’t mean that it’s an all digital world. Certain traditional channels can and do work when it comes to reaching financial advisors.

The Fix: Don’t enter into a campaign saying that you are going to execute an all-digital advertising campaign. We have frequently seen tactics like direct mail, conference and outdoor advertising work when deployed at the right time with the right advisor base. Digital is king – but it is not the emperor of all!

Lacking Broad Integration

The Misstep: An advertising campaign is just that – an advertising campaign. It ends up being put on an island and is completely different from other channels in the marketer’s mix, highly limiting its impact and efficacy.

The Fix: Think across paid, owned and earned channels when figuring out how to activate your campaign. The campaign should be present on the website, should have buy-in and activation among the sales channel, and there should even be ways to thread it into spokesperson activations across PR and social media. An integrated campaign is an effective one!

Unrealistic Expectations

The Misstep: The cost of advertising puts it in a unique spotlight. Everyone wants to contest how a large portion of money could be spent and whether sinking it into advertising is really the best solution. That too often leads to unrealistic expectations about the intended results of a campaign – and just how long it can take to achieve them.

The Fix: Set proper expectations – and prepare your entire executive team to make a multi-year commitment to advertising. It’s important for everyone to understand that spending money one year and then eliminating it the next is a sinkhole, but spending consecutively has a meaningful, strategic contribution to brand-building. And don’t forget a clear measurement plan so that everyone understands the objectives and how to stay accountable to achieving them.

Advertising is – sadly – one of the only turnkey, scalable ways for you to maximize the reach of your brand. Naturally, that costs money. Make sure you are spending it wisely!