Building a Better Business for Greater Growth through Rebranding, Repositioning and Marketing Funnels
Fractional Outsourced Marketing Expertise Revives Financial Planning Firm and Drives Business Growth
Fractional Outsourced Marketing Expertise Revives Financial Planning Firm and Drives Business Growth
Joe Morgan, CFA, CFP®
Principal
Best Financial Life
While most financial planning firms provide advice and strategies geared toward specific products or services, Best Financial Life takes a different approach. As a fee-only financial advisor, Joe Morgan, CFA, CFP®, Best Financial Life’s founder, provides non-biased advice based on each client’s specific needs. Joe demystifies personal finance by uncovering each client’s areas of struggle, providing the tools, insight, and motivation to address these pain points.
If done right, financial planning can help consumers use their resources to meet their life goals. But for plans to support those goals, no matter what season of life consumers are in, they need to study the big picture. Best Financial Life focuses on understanding a consumer’s true values and motivations, developing goals and objectives, and then using those to guide the planning process. Ultimately this creates a framework for making the best financial decisions possible so Joe’s clients can live their best financial lives.
This client wanted to grow his business 350% over the next five years. This would amount to about 50 new clients over that duration. But, in order to get there, we needed to do some realignment. Joe’s brand had become static and was getting lost in the marketplace. His firm’s original name, JWM Wealth Management, LLC, was too traditional, redundant as “WM” stood for “Wealth Management”, and not memorable. And, the business name didn’t align with the services the company provided – their focus wasn’t about wealth management. The original firm’s logo was difficult to read, it was too long with the full name and tagline, and the grey hue used in the design was dull, heavy, and off brand. Overall, neither mirrored his strategy and goals. On top of that, there was no voice or position of leadership that addressed his expertise in eliminating financial anxiety and helping women to live their ultimate financial life.
Business development can be tricky when it comes to professional services, especially in the financial world. It can be tough to get potential clients to trust you when it comes to their money. However, from working with Joe, we knew that he had the background, expertise, and passion. Our goal moving forward was to harness Joe Morgan as the attractive character of the firm, leveraging his unique voice, warmth, and appeal, while positioning him as a leading resource for trusted knowledge and smart financial planning solutions. And that’s what I did. From the get-go, I worked on getting results, coaching Joe every day on sales and marketing tactics.
Financial news and information can be confusing and overwhelming in an industry that is saturated. Clients may not realize a smart, valuable solution until it’s in their hands. Through his years of experience and unique perspective on personal finance, Joe has made the process streamlined and easy to consume. As evident by his fiduciary duty and flat fee payment structure, he is genuinely there for his clients’ benefits – not to sell another product or focus on a one-off strategy.
Right off the bat, I knew Joe had to become more visible. I worked to capitalize on this by implementing social media, email marketing, and blog communications that packaged this content in a way that was designed to educate and engage with Joe’s target audience. I worked to craft the firm’s social media policy and implemented rebranding efforts across all platforms to fix his social media profiles. Q2Mark also developed and implemented an integrated email marketing system, while also launching -bimonthly evergreen blog content with email and social media campaigns driving traffic back to BestFinLife.com to help build trust and provide greater value while helping with SEO. In addition, I worked to help him structure his local event presentations also driving traffic to his web site for even more appointment opportunities.
As I worked to fix the logo, I wanted to keep the symbolic elements, but warm it up, make it friendly, and more contemporary. The designs I recommended reemphasized the bridge or pathway element as it related back to Joe’s goal of leading clients on their journey to their Best Financial Life. It also demonstrates not holding someone to a traditional or one size fits all solution. For the colors, I also liked the blue, which was brightened up a bit, and then I recommended adding a green hue, which of course, relates to the world of money and finance, but also represents growth, harmony, and health.
After brainstorming and pitching a variety of name ideas that we’re more meaningful and on strategy with Joe’s business goals, Joe selected Best Financial Life for his new name. Collectively, with the logo, this demonstrated the unique processes and journey Joe takes with each client, as well as his commitment to helping them maintain success in reaching all of their goals regardless of where life takes them.
Joe’s photography was off strategy. Some images looked like he was posing for a dating site and others were outdated in terms of style. To fix, I lead a photo shoot and video shoot to capture the imagery for Joe and his business. I was extremely hands-on in coaching Joe on becoming the recognizable voice of Best Financial Life. I flew up to Danville, staying overnight, to direct the photo shoot and video shoot. I sourced and hired his models, scouted locations, sourced props, and made recommendations on hair and make-up, wardrobe, and even how to pose.
Using this new voice and visual DNA, I reworked Joe’s bio to tell more about his story, his experiences, and why he is the trusted expert for long-term financial success.
Joe’s dream was to be on Wall Street, and after 25 years in the corporate world, managing money for some of the country’s largest foundations, endowments, and corporations, he had seen just about all aspects of the financial world. It’s also what spurred his shift in focus toward family planning. With such different views, experiences, and case studies, I immediately proposed that Joe do a podcast. His wit, charm, and use of pop culture made his stories relatable and easy to consume. Q2Mark developed everything from the concept of the show, the name, graphic, recommending equipment, training Joe on recording, editing the recording and promotional marketing content via email and social media campaigns.
With a new name and logo in place, it was time to realign other touchpoints. To start, we rebuilt Joe’s website repurposing material that worked, refining new copy and imagery to relate to his audience, work with his brand, and help drive lead generation. His old website was not optimized, had virtually no SEO ranking, and wasn’t very user friendly. It had been built by the client through a ready to use template. Instead, we delivered a strategic, interactive, visually appealing business tool with actionable copy that demonstrated Joe’s expertise and knowledge base.
For the struggling SEO, I worked to coach Joe and provided training on best practices. I also worked on auditing and executing optimization strategies across all aspects of Joe’s website during development as well as other digital communications to boost and improve the Best Financial brand ranking long-term.
With Joe becoming more recognized and having a presence, I started to ramp up lead generation, and my tool of choice was the Phone Funnel Framework. This is a process that uses a combination of lead ads, SMS/text messaging, and email communication pushing leads to a primer video and then a main video sales letter in an effort to drive qualified consultation appointments.
Joe was immediately on board, and we got to work mapping out the framework. I developed the video scripts, advertising messaging and graphics, and the SMS/text messaging and email communications touchpoints. I also directed and produced the video shoot during my trip to Danville and edited each of the video pieces. Q2Mark developed the webpages which housed the videos and laid out the extensive funnel flow from Facebook advertising through to Joe’s appointment scheduling system.
Regardless of whether you are selling a product or service, marketing collateral is vital in making sales efforts easier and more effective. I proposed and designed new branded collateral utilizing the logo and strategic color pallet in a variety of ways to continue to drive brand awareness. The eye-catching pieces, including business cards, stationery, and lead magnets, among others, helped to lay the groundwork for a relaunch of the business and growth success goals.
Today, marketing is about building relationships and trust. The main idea is to demonstrate that your business or product can truly solve a problem or provide valuable information to a potential client. Customer relations are present and equally important in just about every aspect of a business, but it prevalent in customer service. I proposed and executed customer relations strategies that supported Best Financial Life to solve customer roadblocks while working to build stronger customer relationships to meet short-term and long-term outlooks.
Paid advertising can be a useful tool for driving traffic and business. For Best Financial Life’s advertisement strategy, we developed, implemented, and executed ads that included a Facebook Awareness Campaign, a Facebook Like Campaign, and advertising in combination with our Phone Funnel Framework, all of which we’re new tactics for Joe and his firm. Q2Mark did the research to help improve positioning, build awareness, while creating the copy, graphics, call-to-actions, managed the budgets, and placement.
In working with Joe Morgan and his firm, Q2Mark has brought creative marketing and consulting services that launched a new brand and repositioned Best Financial Life as the go expert for eliminating financial anxiety. With our immediate implementation, Q2Mark helped Joe secure two new clients with in the first month ending a six-month acquisition stall, and a total of seven new clients nearly exceeding his new annual goal right at the beginning of the year.
Our proven podcast successes that we’ve developed and produced for other clients didn’t fail to deliver this time around either. Since the launch of Deliberate Money Moves, we have nothing but five-star reviews on iTunes and we are successfully streaming on Google Play, Stitcher, and Libsyn.
While Joe was uncertain of the initial investment, the ROI demonstrated results he couldn’t deny. Q2Mark advertising efforts resulted in over 12,000 new page likes, exceeded a reach of 21,000, had a play through of nearly 2,000, and had over 200 clicks.
Our immediate efforts to fix Joe’s social media, drove home the importance that social media marketing tactics can have on a business. Q2Mark successfully delivered a memorable and engaging presence for Best Financial Life, while working to educate and empower Joe’s target audiences. Within the first two months, our social media efforts resulted in nearly 800% in engagement and reach across all platforms. Additional growth results include:
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