COVER STORY most double the $ 80 million over the same period last year.
The firm’ s marketing staff is now spending an hour each month with each advisor and getting them to post on LinkedIn five times a month( compared with just once a month last year). Typically, the advisors who go on the site tell a story about a particular issue they believe is timely.
Every Tuesday the firm holds a meeting to discuss its growth trajectory and what’ s working and what isn’ t. Morton Wealth has 15 advisors, all of whom are expected to bring in business, but McKinnon reports that 18 people, including three non-advisors, have won new clients this year.
Lauren Oschman, the CEO of Nashville, Tenn.-based Vestia, says LinkedIn is also a propitious venue for her firm, which manages $ 950 million. Vestia messages only to core clientele: physicians, many of whom are younger. As part of its advisory service, the firm helps these clients structure their partnerships, benchmark their practices and negotiate their contracts with hospitals( all while these young doctors are also paying down their student loans).
“ It all starts with having that niche,” Oschman says.“ You’ re looking to maximize your audience in a specific space. It makes us very referable, and we can anticipate a lot of questions before they are asked.”
Vestia has created an online financial course for different groups within its physician clientele: female doctors( who often feel underserved by the financial services profession) as well as orthopedic surgeons and other specialists. After tracking response rates to special programs it offered to orthopedists, Vestia asked for email opt-ins and found the rate went from 10 % to 45 %.
To expand the firm’ s outreach and serve more clients, Vestia’ s chief development officer holds weekly meetings with young advisors. Many sessions involve role play and the questions many doctors are asking.“ Your bench strength is critical,” Oschman says.
You’ re Wrong About The Young
Older, established advisors often believe younger advisors don’ t want to hustle for new clients— that the young expect their superiors to bring them new business. McKinnon and Oschman think that’ s a misperception.
So does Angela Giombetti, the chief marketing officer of Wealthspire, a $ 30 billion New York advisory firm.“ We’ ve got younger advisors who want to grow and are more entrepreneurial and want [ some ] autonomy,” she says.
Wealthspire, like many other large firms, is organized into regional territories and targets specific client segments( in Wealthspire’ s case, business owners, attorneys and affluent women). Giombetti develops advisor branding
programs tailored to both the firm ' s advisors and specific types of clients.
The firm frequently holds client events. In mid-August, it hosted an event at the Baltimore Country Club with PGA professional golfer Harris English right before the BMW Championship. Next year it plans to sponsor events on the Ladies PGA Tour and with the WNBA.
As advisory firms grow, some of the largest, like Creative Planning and Corient, have launched national television advertising campaigns. This kind of marketing is beyond the scale of all but a few independent firms, and most of the campaigns take years to produce a return on ad spend. Schwab and Fidelity, for example, are estimated to shell out $ 100 million annually on advertising( and far more on total overall marketing).
But the traditional ways of acquiring clients can still work, too, particularly if you are in the right location. Becky Lightman of Lightman Capital, for instance, has focused on a group in her Palm Beach, Fla., neighborhood
“ The implications of the Great Wealth Transition( don’ t call it a‘ Transfer’) include a greater scale of engagement and more complex service needs— more work but no increase in revenues.”
— Steve Gresham, Next Chapter
that’ s overpopulated with ultra-affluent residents. When she announced on her website that she was raising her minimum account size to $ 5 million, it actually helped her attract more clients with $ 25 million or more.( Most people in that group have multiple advisors.)
Lightman, who spent 13 years as a regional business development head at Northern Trust where she worked with billionaire families, is comfortable in the world of wealthy families. She enjoys speaking on inheritances, and one of her talks on the subject during a reunion at Deerfield Academy, her prep school, drew 200 people and proved fruitful.
She’ s quick to note that advisors like her focused on niches are enjoying similar success. A colleague of hers focuses on first responders, notably firefighters, and though such clients’ first deposits may be smaller, they often are followed by many more.
Oddly, Lightman hasn’ t found it as helpful to network with estate planners, since she works in a market flooded with both advisors and trust and estates attorneys. Accountants have been somewhat more helpful, but many are not particularly assertive, she says.
Continued on page 58
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