Marketing and its challenges
What is content marketing?
This is the question you will be asking when developing your own growth strategies. The answer to this question can vary from business to business. In general, it is a marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action. As you know content marketing has been shaping growth strategies of all businesses competing for market share. As a result, content marketing has been one of the fastest growing industries over the past few decades. As per Market Charts, content marketing is growing 14.3% each year, on average (Figure 1). The global content marketing industry was worth over $36,786.6 million in 2018, and projected to generate $107,540.6 million by 2026, at a 14.3% annual growth rate.
Figure 1.
Obviously, the financial advisory industry is also reliant on effective content marketing. As matter of fact, competition is fierce among financial firms, both small and large and everything in between. Broker-dealers and RIAs compete with each other not only for client base and market share but also for talent. Producing unique and valuable content can help add value and give insight into how you benefit prospects, clients and potential employees alike, if they sign up with you.
However, there are numerous challenges that make content marketing difficult in today’s media environment. In general, producing good content consistently is difficult and it can become a bigger challenge if it gets in the way of running your business. In addition, there is a lot of competition for the audience’s attention which can eat up a lot of resources if you want to keep up in digital marketing. Moreover, the latest trend is shifting toward paid promotion with more and more digital marketing platforms becoming available to those who are interested in automating this process. As a result of these challenges it becomes vital for many businesses to find other ways to augment their interaction with potential customers.
Call Center as a booster for marketing
Even though I have mentioned a few challenges above, marketing is still very important and as all know it is the engine of growth. It should be continuously used to grow your business. The real booster that can empower any marketing campaign is a thorough follow up process. There are numerous follow up strategies, but adding a human factor, such as a phone call interaction, can go a long way in comparison to email, for example. Moreover, an in-depth study by Leadresponsemanagement.org has shown that contacting your leads within 5 minutes produces a 900% increase in contact rates. Specifically, the odds of contacting a lead if called in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop by 100. The odds of qualifying a lead if called in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 21 times (see Figure 2).
Figure 2.
Leads turn cold faster than you might think. Failing to call back your lead within an hour dramatically decreases the chances of engaging them in a conversation. How many times have you been sent to voicemail when returning a morning call in the afternoon?
This is where you need someone who knows how to do it. Finding a good call center can be a powerful business strategy to ensure the growth of your practice.
RiXtrema Call Center vs. Other Call Centers
A call center is not a novel idea and there are a lot of them set up for hire. However, these call centers can be working with many industries off the one-script-fits-all that don’t adapt to the specifics of the business they are hired for. Here, at RiXtrema, we develop in-time follow up strategies to assist financial advisors with their marketing campaigns they run using our tools such as Customized Trackable Marketing Letters or Larkspur Executive Campaigns. RiXtrema’s strategy is built around quick reaction to open marketing letters to capture a lead’s attention while it is warm. As I mentioned above, calling within 5 minutes after an email is opened increases the chances of setting up an appointment by 900%. Moreover, our call representatives are dedicated to work with fewer advisers in order to provide more time calling on their behalf using custom specific scripts based on learning as much as possible about an adviser’s practice, background, services provided. Our call center representatives have introductory calls with advisors to get to know them, and learn about specific pain points the advisor faces when working with plan sponsors which increases the interest among the potential leads to continue the conversation with the adviser. Our built-in CRM allows us to keep track of the progress of an advisor’s account, which allows for transparency and accountability, and reports are made available to advisers on the bi-monthly basis.
Feel free to contact with our Client Success team to schedule the call at clientsuccess@rixtrema.com.
