Learning to Leverage Educational Marketing as a Financial Advisor

FMT is incredibly excited to launch our Leading with Education webinar series, dedicated to exploring educational marketing and its potential as a primary vehicle for business growth in financial services. For our first installment, our CEO, Nick Schilling, and our Director of Marketing, Carrie Roso, sat in conversation with our Director of Sales and Account Management, Andrew Hinkle, to get his take on why its so important to understand your audience as a financial advisor utilizing educational marketing, and how FMT can help.

It's Time to Get in the Classroom

To put things in perspective, we live in a nation where 93% of U.S. adults over 45 believe financial education should be required, and yet our public education system isn’t keeping up with demand. In order to solve this problem and get the answers they need, people are turning to financial education courses taught by independent financial advisors. In fact, Kitces reports that “the most cost-effective strategies for an advisor’s time [...] were all related to educating prospects.”

As these statistics help illustrate, educational marketing and teaching is a huge opportunity for independent financial advisors to take advantage of! Andrew explains, “with the current environment, people are looking for answers and education. Advisors partnered with FMT have a distinct advantage to brand themselves as a Knowledge Expert within their communities. This community of advisors is a great resource to share best practices and how to succeed as a financial educator.”

Nick added, “by conducting a class where somebody’s going to pay to attend, that shows they want to be educated by you. They aren’t just there to hear what’s going on, they are there to be educated. In this way, teaching an FMT class creates purposeful intent for somebody to attend, it’s not just a run of the mill sales pitch over free dinner.”

Speaking to the power of connection in the classroom, Andrew added “we all have smartphones, we're all inundated with what's going on and the good, the bad, the ups, the downs, the fluctuation. For you to be able to sit down and work with families in your community that are looking for answers is a way you can help shape the way that they look at these issues. It is a way that you can showcase how they can begin to plan financially moving forward. Showcasing your expertise in this way is a great way to interest people in becoming future clients.”

Building a Class for Your Target Audience

Getting up and teaching a group of perspective clients is just one piece of the puzzle. The other key aspect is to make sure you understand the audience you are speaking to and what financial topics they want to be educated on.

One way we can demonstrate this is by breaking down our course layouts. Currently, we have three distinct courses we offer for certified advisors that are designed to provide financial literacy to a unique audience, each at a different stage in life. The three courses are designed as the following:

• For retirees, typically ages 65 or older and is focused on optimizing your retirement and what you can do when you’re already at this stage in your life.
• For folks 5 - 15 years from retirement and are actively preparing for their retirement years and the decisions that that transition will require.
• For people who are a bit farther away from retirement when are in the top earning years and have complex financial lives to navigate as they are still actively building their assets.

By investing in understanding who the ideal target is for each of our courses, we can better reach them, appeal to them, and create content for them that resonates and ultimately gets them into your classroom.

A Trusted Partner for the Future of Educational Marketing

Perhaps the clearest takeaway from the webinar is that financial advisor marketing is brimming with untapped potential in the education space. As Nick sums it up, “At FMT, our job is to help each one of these educators and advisors in their local marketplace be an implementer of the idea that best fits their firm and help them execute that to the best of our ability.”

We know how beneficial it can be to hear from the experts and pioneers in this space, like Andrew, firsthand. Each month we will bring another expert voice from the field, who will share their best practices and key learnings for using comprehensive education to grow their practice.

Stay tuned for more interviews with advisors who are using education to grow their practice in our Leading with Education Series. Watch the full webinar here for deeper insights and helpful tips.