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Financial Advisor Marketing Articles

Feel free to browse around a few of our FREE Marketing Articles for Financial Advisors.  In a few nights of easy reading, learn how to get new clients, how to keep clients.  First up, a lesson on SEO: SEO – Practical advice for smaller businesses

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Here are a few more articles for Financial Advisors:  Referrals – a Three Part Technical Article on Getting Referrals

If you’d really like to get new clients, please check out our Awesome Series of Financial Advisor Marketing Letters to make your mailings sizzle with response: – See what our letters look like: free sample Financial Advisor Sales Letter: Financial Advisor Marketing — Sales Letters

Since Financial Advisors live or die on referrals, here’s an awesome article on what to do when you get a referral – and how to get more:  Get More Referrals with this quick, easy and effective method using a thank you letter for referrals: – CLICK HERE!

The Jeff Dobkin 100 to 1 Rule.  
Learn how to create a great headline for your ad or post card, create the first line of your press release or marketing letter.  This article is one of Jeffrey’s favorites, and not just because he has his name in the title.  OK, it’s because he has his name in the title…

And now, enjoy some  fun articles with a marketing message, with our compliments:

You Emailed What!!!?

By Jeffrey Dobkin

Yes, I got your email yesterday.

I get everyone’s email, at least that’s the way it seems.  300 Messages a day.  Including low mortgage rates, sex from Russian women who are lonely, free money from the Prime Minister of Nigeria, Via*ra stores, a whole barrage of messages in Spanish which I don’t speak, and now in alphabets I can’t decipher.

Yes, I’m sure I received the email from you, but just refresh me – what was it about?

Isn’t it the same on your computer?  Thousands of pieces of information showing up in electronically charged ions every day?
When do you get free time to read it all?  Answer: You don’t.

 So, here’s the problem:

Computer overload.  Too much information. Everyone is taking precise aim right at my CRT (whoa – cathode ray tubes, remember them?  Or am I dating myself – which wouldn’t be a bad thing as at least I’d have something to do this Friday night).  Seriously, though… I’m out of computer screen time. Until I figure out a way to get my computer into the bathroom, it’s likely to stay that way.  Hummm… computer, bath room… I wonder if I could…!  No, my wife would kill me.

But there’s good news, too.  You don’t have to send everything by email.

Because you can send your prospects, clients and customers a letter.
Remember them?  Letters are always well received and nice letters are really, really well received.

Email = ugh not another one!  How fast can get it off my screen!

Letter = hey – I got a letter!

 Come on, admit it – you like to get letters, too.  Nice letters can sit on your desk, you can read and reread them at your leisure and smile.  Go on – take one into the bathroom, I’ll wait.

Sure, email is great if you need to supply a fast quote by the end of the day.  It’s an emergency vehicle.  But if it’s that important, your brief email should be followed up by a real letter.  Yea, a real USPS-delivered letter.

You see, emails, websites, searches and results; everything on the web is a victim of your limited time of staring at it on your computer screen.  And after the briefest of looks, it’s gone from your screen, gone from sight, and — out of sight out of mind.

But a letter?  A real letter?  Wow. I can send you a letter and it can sit on your desk for days (or around here, weeks or months).  All the while reminding you how much I care about you as a client and a friend.  Reminding you I took the trouble to sit down and compose it and actually write something intelligent out, in proper English and using capitals, no typos (OK minimal typos) find an envelope and a stamp – no simple task around here, either; address it and finally charge down to the post office to send it to you.  Yea, it was that important.

When you get right down to it, an email is a brief note that is always a nanosecond away from the delete button.  A letter is a permanent work of passion: writing and art wrapped into an air of permanence.

Help the ailing post office out – write a letter.  It’s something that can stick around forever. 
The only time an email does that is when you’ve said something you shouldn’t have.

A letter can be your showpiece of fine linen stationary, handsome logo and well thought out, well phrased wording that has the permanence an email always lacks. Traditional letters are always ready to be passed around the office, shown to colleagues – for them to touch and see.  It’s a real document, with your personal signature – right there on the face of it.

Unlike emails, when a letter is filed away it’s always at hand. I’ll bet you 2 to 1 that you can put your hands on an old letter you received 6 months ago.  Yes, even though it wasn’t that important when you received it, it plunged into an easy-to-find filing system – which I actually believe was developed by the gods 4,000 years ago.  But that email you got last week?  That’s different.  Where is it now?  I’ll tell you:

Where old messages go to die:

I have this huge file on my computer called older mail.  That’s where old messages go to die.  On a good day, most emails receive the briefest of looks, on a bad day, even less – too bad I wasn’t ready to deal with the matter at hand at that time. Then, 500 more emails came in.

On a bad day they all went to directly to the spam file unopened or the “Older Mail” to be viewed sometimes between later and never and just wound up trashed with all the other messages facing similar fate: death by distraction. Someday I’ll look through them all again.  All ten million of them.  Yea, right.  Do you keep telling yourself that, too?

Does your communications strategy match your customer’s expectations?  Because today that’s just not good enough, is it?  In today’s tough selling environment – it should exceed expectations.  Don’t you think you should strive for a more lasting impression than a brief email?

The Bottom Line of this Marketing Article:


Here’s what I’m saying: Other than an emergency message or a quick quote, don’t be too fast on the trigger to dash something off so nonchalantly in an email.

Make customers and prospects feel special: show real customer care by sending a letter.  An email campaign isn’t going to match what you can do with a letter or a series of letters.  In fact, the best marketing program you can create is a series of letters.  But, that’s another article – and you can access it by calling Jeff – 610-642-1000, or dropping him a letter: P.O. Box 100, Merion Station, PA  19066.  Any questions?

*I know you just wanted me to go to your website and… and… what?  Look for information you could have told me in 30 seconds if I had spoken with you on the phone?  Did you just blow me off like the phone companies to sludge through all that advertising verbiage of ‘how great your customer care is’ on your site to find that teeny tiny tidbit of relevant information I needed that was just past 6 clicks deep… if only I knew where to look.  Really?

I wasn’t going to tell you this but BTW, your website?  It sucks.  Yea, I know you worked hard on it, and it was expensive… but it really isn’t all that great.  Because I left your site after just 3 minutes.  I went to the Amazon site, the L.L. Bean site, CNN, Time, and Yahoo sites – and yours doesn’t really compare.  When your clients are on the web, there are 80,000,000 other sites competing for their computer screen time, too.  How good is your site now?

 

Jeff Dobkin will now take your questions.  Write him at jeff at dobkin dot com  Call him at 610-642-1000.  Jeff is a humorous motivational speaker with an intense message of how to increase the response of your marketing campaign and keep customers longer.  And did I mention a damn good copywriter specializing in letters, print ads and web content.  He has written 5 books on direct marketing and two on humor.  Please buy his books — he needs the money.  Just kidding!  You don’t have to buy his books.  Just send the money.

NEW – For the Financial Advisor Community:  Jeffrey Dobkin has just personally finished writing a series of awesome sales letters specifically for Financial Advisors.
These letters do just one thing:  they make people call you.  They don’t sell anything, they don’t showcase your products or position on the market, or sell stocks, bonds or whatever.  They are written with one single objective: to make your phone ring.  That’s all they do, and they do it very, very well.  Then YOU can speak with recipients, sell them anything you like, send them material or free booklets – and convert them to become your clients.  That’s YOUR job.

The goal of the letters Dobkin has written is to get readers to CALL YOU – so you can do your job.  If this sounds like a letter series you’d be interested in learning more about, please Click Here.  To go to the Checkout Page to purchase Jeffrey Dobkin’s series of Awesome Financial Advisor Sales Letters, Click Here!    To stay where you are, Click Here. Or… don’t do anything, you’re already here!  Ha ha.  You’ve got to admit, Jeffrey has a pretty funny sense of humor!  But, his Awesome Series of Financial Sales Letters is harder working than he is, a very serious set of goal-oriented letters, and will definitely make people call you.  To get more business, get more clients – you can now make your phone ring with this series of sales letters written and designed specifically to fulfill one specific objective – to get readers to pick up the phone and CALL YOU.  Click Here to order.  Thank you.