Annual Communication Plan

Do you have a written strategic plan outlining how you are going to communicate with your clients? Famous American author Napolean Hill once wrote “Reduce your plan to writing. The moment you complete this, you will have definitely given concrete form to the intangible desire.” A common belief in relationships is that absence makes the heart grow fonder. However, in business absence from your clients can create opportunity for your competition.

The purpose of a strategic communication plan is to outline how you will communicate your message, whom you will communicate your message, how your message will be delivered and how often your messages will be delivered. With today’s financial services professionals this plan will serve as a marketing roadmap to help you focus on the objective of better client communication, better client retention and creating referral opportunities.

The following 7 step plan will help you start committing your “intangible desires” into a “concrete form”:

1) Determine Your Objectives
First you must determine what the objectives of your plan will be. Perhaps it is to tell customers about a great new service or product you are introducing. Alternatively, it can be as simple as increasing your client base by 20% over the next 12 months. Objectives should be measurable so you can determine if your efforts are successful down the road and make changes if necessary.

2) Determine a Theme or Key Message
Remember that the key to your communication success is to differentiate you and your practice from the crowd. We recommend that you choose a theme for the year and try to weave this theme into all your messages. Think outside the box on this.

3) Determine Your Audience
To Segment or Not to Segment… that is the question. Many advisors ask if they should segment their customers. We believe that all customers are good customers. However, that being said, it does not make sense to dedicate the same expense or resources to your top tier high net worth clients than to the others. This segmentation process may be as simple as your best clients getting more one-on-one time or getting invited to an “extra special” client event once or twice a year.

4) Determine Your Communication Budget
This can be difficult subject for advisors and difficult to give a blanket answer. We see that most advisors spend anywhere from 5% to 15% of their gross commission and/or fees on marketing and advertising. Your communication budget should be included in that percentage. One benefit you have in the financial services industry is that you have sponsors and wholesalers that can help offset some expenses.

5) Determine What Mediums to Use
How are you going to communicate with your clients? We recommend a combination of traditional print (letters, postcards, newsletters, etc), electronic communications (email, website and other social media), telephone calls, and meetings or events (one-on-one, educational, client appreciation, client referral or family oriented)

6) Implementation / Execution
This is where the rubber meets the road. Think of this as the master to-do list to achieve your objective. This is when you commit to paper all the things we have already talked about. We recommend that you break up your plan by month or quarter and start making your list. This can be daunting at first, but be diligent and you will succeed.

Now that you have the plan, the hard part starts. We need to execute. This will take commitment, time and money. Peter Drucker, the famous management expert once said “Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.”

You need to set reminders that will keep you on track. You can automate this with an Outlook Calendar or a Google Calendar. Another idea is to assign the task to someone in your office or even ask a friend to hold you accountable and call you at the beginning of each month. It may sound strange, but just knowing the call is coming will help you stay of track.

7) Evaluation
An old management adage is that you can’t manage what you can’t measure. In step #1, we determined what our objective will be for our plan. Be sure that on a monthly basis or, at a minimum, quarterly basis you need to be able to measure and capture if you are on track, ahead or behind your objectives. Metrics are a key part of any business success.

Thomas Edison once wrote “Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning.” There is a lot of opportunity out there to meet new customers while improving the communications you currently have with existing customers. We want you to succeed with your plan. Although this seems simple, if you put the plan together and stick it in a drawer, you might as well not have taken the time.

We can help with this process if you are interested. We have done this before and for a nominal fee we will schedule regular calls and help you compile and track your metrics. We can even send you regular emails to remind you of certain tasks that need to be performed in your plan. Last, if this just seems too overwhelming, we can not only help you put your plan together, but also help you execute the plan. We can help you design your campaigns, newsletter and special events. We can help you stay in front of your customers regularly through print, email, and even make regularly scheduled contact calls for you. We can even work with your compliance department to help keep you plan on track.

Please give us a call for a free consultation to help you determine your next steps. Also, don’t forget to signup for our free eNewsletter, we will have many great ideas to help you build you business.