I’m amazed when I meet savvy financial advisors who know all there is to know about the world of high finance but know hardly anything about the world of marketing. In the current and future business environments, every financial planner must realize that he or she is actually in four businesses at once.
The first, of course, is the financial advising business, just as it says on your business card. The second, and commit this one to memory, is the marketing business—because your financial advice must be marketed in order for your prospects to benefit from it and for you to profit from it.
The third business you ‘re in is the service business because that’s really what you ‘re marketing in the first place and what your clients will increasingly expect from you. And the fourth business you’re in all along is the people business, for it’s people who will be your prospects, your clients, your representatives, and your staff. The lifeblood of any business is people. The vitality of a business is service. The fire that fuels the profits is marketing.
Guerrilla Marketing for Financial Advisors tells you how to be a Rembrandt in the art of marketing. It covers both the crucial and the overlooked methods of marketing. Grant W. Hicks takes you by the hand and leads you safely through the minefields of marketing to the achievement of your goals—and beyond, if you so desire. The power of well-planned marketing is awesome—as those of you who plan financial futures are well aware.
Guerrilla Marketing means striving for conventional objectives and attaining them with unconventional methods. It means making your primary marketing investment not money, but time, energy, imagination, and information. Grant W. Hicks has packed these pages with the exact information you should have—better suited to your specific needs than an MBA in Marketing from any institution of learning on earth.
His wisdom covers all the details of successful marketing for financial advisors. Overlooking any of them can make the difference between gliding and struggling. Best of all, he does it in true guerrilla fashion—pointing out the ways to market first-class while paying less than economy fare.
As I’m privileged to be associated with this book, you’re blessed to have the opportunity not only to soak up its wisdom, but also to act on its insights. Action is the purpose of the exercise. Guerrilla Marketing is not a spectator sport.
After you’ve completed this book and you’ve recovered from the onslaught of common sense and brilliance on every page you read, you’re going to feel more optimistic about your future than ever. I don t blame you. Now, you’ve got the acumen of a guerrilla.
What is Marketing in the First Place?
Marketing is absolutely every bit of contact any part of your business has with any segment of the public. Guerrillas view marketing as a circle that begins with your ideas for generating revenue and continues on with the goal of amassing a large number of repeat and referral clients. The three keys words in that paragraph are EVERY, REPEAT, and REFERRAL. If your marketing is not a circle, it’s a straight line that leads directly into Chapters 7, 11, or 13 in the bankruptcy courts.
How is Guerrilla Marketing Different from Traditional Marketing?
Guerrilla marketing means marketing that is unconventional, non-traditional, not by-the-book, and extremely flexible. Ten factors make it different from old-fashioned marketing:
1. Instead of investing money in the marketing process, you invest time, energy, and imagination.
2. Instead of using guesswork in your marketing, you use the science of psychology, laws of human behavior.
3. Instead of concentrating on traffic, responses, or gross sales, profits are the only yardstick by which you measure your marketing.
4. Instead of being oriented to companies with limitless bank accounts, guerrilla marketing is geared to small business.
5. Instead of ignoring clients once they’ve invested, you have a fervent devotion to client follow-up.
6. Instead of intimidating small business owners, guerrilla marketing removes the mystique from the entire marketing process, clarifies it.
7. Instead of competing with other businesses, guerrilla marketing preaches the gospel of cooperation, urging you to help others and let them help you.
8. Instead of trying to make sales, guerrillas are dedicated to making relationships, for long-term relationships are paramount.
9. Instead of believing that single marketing weapons such as advertising work, guerrillas know that only marketing combinations work.
10. Instead of encouraging you to advertise, guerrilla marketing provides you with 100 different marketing weapons; advertising is only one of them.
These are ten very critical differences and are probably the reasons that the concept of guerrilla marketing has filled a void in the world’s economy, explaining why the guerrilla books (GUERRILLA MARKETING, GUERRILLA MARKETING ATTACK, GUERRILLA MARKETING WEAPONS, GUERRILLA MARKETING EXCELLENCE, GUERRILLA FINANCING, GUERRILLA SELLING,
GUERRILLA ADVERTISING and GUERRILLA MARKETING HANDBOOK are among 30 books in the series) have been translated into 33 languages, sold over one million copies, are required reading in most MBA programs, are available in audiotape and videotape versions, as computer software, as a nationally-syndicated column, as a newsletter, and are the most popular and wide¡y-read marketing books in the world.
Jay Conrad Levinson
Marin County, California, 2003
The information in this book does not constitute a recommendation for the sale or purchase of any securities or insurance.