Although advisors want to market themselves in order to realize their full potential, not everyone has the resources to launch a big-budget advertising campaign. There are, however, ways advisors can market themselves on a shoestring budget.

Catherine Nomura of Strategic Coach Inc. in Toronto believes the best marketing strategy for advisors is to strengthen relationships with the clients they already have.

“[Satisfied] clients are more likely to come to you when they have other business, or recommend you to others,” she says. “Referrals tend to be one of the great forces of new business that aren’t fully exploited by advisors. A referral from a client who appreciates what you do for them is more valuable than any business you get from a stranger.”

Identify your best clients, then think of ways to make sure those people are thinking about you, Nomura advises. “Do something that is not related to business, such as taking them to a ball game or out to dinner. Be a little more creative with the people you already know.”

Ian Johnson, author of Marketing Solutions: How to grow your professional practice in Vancouver, says advertising is more effective when a name is already well-known, as it need only remind people of who you are. “A low-cost way to make your name known is to use public relations tools such as networking in your community and word-of-mouth marketing,” he says. Johnson suggests putting news releases on Web sites such as www.prweb.com.

Advisors looking for new clients must first decide what kind of clients they want to attract, and then find a way to reach them, according to Joanne Ferguson, co-founder and partner of Advisor Pathways Inc. in Stratford, Ont. She offers a number of suggestions to help advisors make the most of small advertising budgets:

> Look for common traits. Have members of your team write down the names and professions of their top four or five clients. Then write down where those clients’ interests lie and, if they are small-business owners, their hobbies and their family situations. Then look for common threads among these top clients, and plan events to attract similar individuals.

“When an advisor in Calgary and his team did this exercise, they realized that a majority of their clients were interested in doing family activities, so they started planning appreciation events,” Ferguson explains. “They got tickets to a local zoo and gave them to these clients so they could invite family members and friends with children. [The team] also did a golf day. They have now been doing it for three years with great success.”

> Write a column for a local newspaper. Some newspapers will pay an advisor to write
a personal finance column, Ferguson says. You can also volunteer to write a column for a community paper. If the paper can’t afford to pay, you’ll still benefit, as this activity gets your name out into the community. This is assuming you can write.

> Get on the radio. If you are quick on your feet and well-spoken, consider doing a weekly market update for a local radio station.

> Create an e-newsletter. Create a PDF document containing financial information and market updates and e-mail it to clients. “You can send this document as many times as you want, and there is no mailing cost,” Ferguson says. When a client receives important information this way, they will probably e-mail it to their friends.

“I get a newsletter from an advisor regularly,” she says. “I don’t read it every time, but if I need an advisor in his area of expertise, his name is the first that comes to mind.”

> Form a newsletter network. Get a network of professionals together, either from your company or from outside, and create a joint newsletter. Ferguson tells of a group of professionals in British Columbia — a financial advisor, a real estate agent, an accountant, a lawyer and a health professional — who got together and created a newsletter. Each wrote a column in his or her area of expertise. A graphic designer created the template for free in exchange for putting his name on the back of the newsletter. Each then sent the newsletter to their respective clients.

Using this strategy, your name gets sent to the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people who are clients of other professionals, with an implicit recommendation.

@page_break@> Volunteer. Help out with a cause you believe in, says Ferguson. This can mean participating in a charitable event such as a fun run or walk-a-thon and inviting clients to join you, or participating in a charity golf tournament.

> Self-improvement. Johnson suggests advisors look in the mirror to see where there’s room for self-improvement: “If you are shy and uncomfortable when meeting people, then you need to develop your networking skills.” IE