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Build, Measure, Refine, Repeat: How to Maximize Advisor Engagement

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Have you Calibrated Metrics-Driven Advisor Engagement?

To engage advisors, you are using various communications tools/media channels roughly based on their ability to help you target your audience, but you may not have a good feel for their effectiveness.  And perhaps there isn’t a cadence to your ‘touches’, that is, a systematic communications plan with some frequency to maximize impact.  Further, you may not have a feel for your Revenue Funnel and budgets.

This is an indication that you have not:

  • Evaluated available communications tools / media based on their ability to help you target your audience, deliver cogent messages, control costs, and provide the highest yield potential.
  • Planned programs that emphasize frequency to maximize impact of systematic communications and touch individuals, at their moment of readiness when they’re ready and able to volunteer themselves as prospective buyers
  • Connected revenues and budgets

Metrics-Driven Methodology

To build a metrics-driven advisor engagement strategy, the first step is to connect your business model / budgets with your goals.  The next step is to build a good understanding of your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) or measurable values that will show the progress of your business goals.  Examples include:

  • Number of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL)
  • MQL conversion % to  Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)
  • SQL conversion % to new clients
  • Client Lifetime Value

Second, create a high-impact, results-focused marketing plan, choosing tools and media channels in the context of:

  • Target Audience Reach (how many)
  • Frequency of Reach (how often)
  • Impact (engagement/response potential)
  • Intimacy (relevance, resonance & personalization)

It’s advisable to test and recalibrate your plan and media mix over time. Testing will help to determine the optimal number of impressions or touch points that should be factored into your plan before you begin to see significantly diminishing returns. Testing is also essential to understanding what tactics, messages, content, formats and media are most effective AND cost-efficient.

Start small by using a few key metrics that are easy to track using your marketing automation / CRM; then build from there, ultimately incorporating predictive and other data-driven business intelligence.

Revenue Funnel Metrics

To give your plan a real litmus test, consider reverse engineering your Revenue Funnel and do the “funnel math”: From impressions and leads created at the top-of-funnel all the way through to revenue and ROI at the bottom-of-funnel.

At a high level, there are three steps:

  1. Establish an effective understanding of the engagement potential for each of your funnel segments and channels  
  2. Tie it back into your hierarchy of metrics (see related post)revenue funnel
  3. Then model your revenue architecture, that is, the channels and target spend based on top-down market budget and goals.

Taking the Revenue Funnel Metrics approach further, consider the alignment and integration of your Marketing and Sales teams in a ‘closed-loop’ revenue architecture (See related post.) Optimally marketing / sales will:

  • Work together to orchestrate the customer experience end-to-end and generate leads, nurture opportunities in the pipeline and ultimately convert sales and
  • Track / measure this end-to-end so marketing and sales can attribute revenue to marketing programs and campaigns and see what is working and not working. We call this a ‘closed-loop revenue architecture’.

Bottom line: a closed-loop revenue architecture and metrics-driven methodology will help you measure and optimize a high performance advisor engagement strategy. 

Download a copy of the Buyer Engagement eBook: “Exposed: The False Promises of Revenue Marketing”

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Revenue First: Rethinking the Metrics That Matter

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The easiest metrics to measure are not always the most meaningful

When evaluating asset management marketing programs, indicators such as response / registration rate, open / click-through rate may be among the metrics you look for.

In an example of a narrower view, search marketing providers are measuring clicks, page visitation and navigation, length of visit, and the value of a “lead” based on what you paid for it.

Metrics are useful when they’re used for the tasks they’re best suited for, such as:

  • Testing which message/content combinations are working best,
  • Reviewing the types of content that prospects find most appealing,
  • Understanding where a prospect started in buyer journey and how they progressed through each stage to become a new advisor client (organic search, PPC, display ads, site sponsorship, social media, etc.)

These data are important but meaningless in the context of stand-alone metrics, without additional context for what happens next. They are irrelevant if you’re not engaging your ideal accounts or prospective buyers. You may consider them as leading indicators.

How do you re-think metrics, differentiate the best metrics that matter?

Differentiating between individual metrics and the KPIs that Matter.

Consider a revenue-first approach to re-think the metrics that matter, that is, metrics that are predictors of qualified account or sales opportunities and ultimately revenue delivered.

  • Start by defining KPIs or Key Performance indicators, that is, measurable values that show the progress of your business goals for your Asset Management Marketing and Sales
  • Gain a clear understanding of the importance of the KPIs, their hierarchy and how to align efforts to maximize performance in each.

advisor engagement metricsSee illustrative metrics, listed hierarchically from most important to least important

  1. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
  2. Supporting Metrics
  3. Supporting Metrics

 

Sales Activity Attributable to Marketing.

One of the key challenges is calculating sales activity attributable to marketing.  The Supporting Metrics, e.g., cost-per-sale, cost-per-qualified-lead are often much easier to track and report on than the core KPIs – e.g., sales activity attributable to marketing.

While new software tools are helping to bridge the gap, there’s still a bit of “black magic” to the matter. Let’s consider a this scenario for sales attributable to marketing:

You’ve targeted a prospect through multiple media. What activity do you “credit” for the inquiry if they’ve responded to a direct message via LinkedIn or an e-mail campaign, enter a landing page through paid search, or click on a link in social media—? After all, it may have been the display ad or landing page that did the bulk of the selling, even if the response/registration initialy came through via e-mail. Last click attribution can be quite misleading at times. This suggests the need to measure return-on-marketing spend by (i) individual activity AND (iI) in the aggregate.

In the end, attribution will be an important thing to solve for in establishing a revenue first hierarchy predictors of qualified account or sales opportunities and ultimately revenue delivered.

Download a copy of the Buyer Engagement eBook: “Exposed: The False Promises of Revenue Marketing”

Download
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