2024 Regional Summits | Leveraging AI for Marketing Your Practice

Ashley Passow, the Senior Marketing Specialist at RPAG, discusses how AI can revolutionize marketing for financial advisors, particularly in the retirement space. Ashley emphasizes the importance of marketing in general, the digital age presents endless opportunities for growth through well-targeted marketing efforts.

Many advisors rely on word-of-mouth to gain new clients, but marketing offers the opportunity to expand your reach exponentially. For every dollar spent on email marketing, businesses see an average return of $36—a huge ROI that can’t be ignored. Additionally, with over 246 million social media users in the U.S. alone, and each person spending an average of two hours daily across different platforms, it’s clear that social media offers an invaluable opportunity for brand exposure.

Here are a few key reasons why marketing your advisory practice is important:

1. Build Brand Awareness: Building your online presence ensures that when potential clients need an advisor, you’ll be the first name that comes to mind.

2. Generate Leads: By accurately targeting your audience, you can generate high-quality leads. Whether through email campaigns or social media, you’ll attract people who are interested in your services.

3. Establish Authority: Regularly sharing relevant and insightful content helps position you as an expert in your field. Prospective and current clients will trust your knowledge and approach, making it easier to retain clients and convert leads.

4. Differentiate From Competitors: Show potential clients how you stand out. Being a member of RPAG can give you unique tools and insights that differentiate you from others in your space.

5. Adapt to Market Changes: Marketing helps you receive real-time feedback. Through comments and interactions, you’ll know if your strategy is resonating with your audience and adjust accordingly.

AI tools like ChatGPT can significantly enhance your marketing efforts. ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is designed to help with a variety of tasks, from answering questions to generating content. It's important to keep in mind that while it's not perfect, its human-like tone is a result of extensive training on text data. While AI can be a useful tool, an experienced marketing team cannot be replaced by it.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when using AI for marketing:

• Be Mindful of Bias and Accuracy: AI pulls from internet data, which isn’t always reliable. Always fact-check the information AI tools provide before using it in your marketing materials.
• Iterate and Refine: Don’t settle for the first result. If ChatGPT’s output doesn’t fully meet your expectations, refine your prompt until it generates something that aligns with your vision.
• AI is an Assistant, Not a Replacement: While AI can be incredibly useful for generating ideas and drafting content, it shouldn’t replace your marketing team. Instead, think of it as a tool to enhance your team’s capabilities.

Ashley advises using AI tools for generating content across platforms, particularly for social media posts and email campaigns. Below are her top strategies:

Social Media

• Platform Selection: For retirement advisors, LinkedIn is ideal because it’s where business professionals and plan sponsors are most active.
• Use Content Creatively: You can paste articles (like those from RPAG’s Retirement Times) into ChatGPT and ask it to generate social media posts for you. However, always double-check the hashtags it suggests—AI can occasionally suggest irrelevant or odd ones.

Example Prompt: "Make three short social media posts for this article. I’m a retirement plan advisor trying to disperse important information about retirement to plan sponsors."

Email Marketing

Email marketing remains one of the most effective tools in your marketing toolbox, especially when combined with AI-generated content.

• Subject Lines: Subject lines are critical; 47% of email recipients open emails based solely on the subject line. Use ChatGPT to brainstorm and generate various subject lines to test with your audience.
  • Example Prompt: "Write 10 subject lines for an email introducing my one-on-one advising service to plan sponsors."

• Cold Emails: Keep your emails short and to the point when reaching out to new prospects.
  • Example Prompt: "Write a concise cold email for a retirement plan advisor targeting plan sponsors."

• Warm Emails: For contacts you’ve already engaged with, a more detailed and personal touch is essential. Refine AI’s output to ensure it reflects your personality and the previous conversations you’ve had.

While AI tools like ChatGPT can supercharge your marketing efforts, it’s important to remember three crucial warnings:

1. Data Privacy: Be cautious about sharing sensitive information with AI tools. Data you input can be stored and used in future outputs, so make sure not to put any password, monetary, or personally identifiable information.

2. SEO Penalties: Google penalizes websites that use AI-generated content verbatim, so always make sure to heavily edit any AI-generated copy before publishing it on your site.

3. Misinformation: AI is not perfect. Ensure that all information, particularly factual details, is accurate before using it.

Using AI in your marketing can greatly increase the number of people you can reach and interact with. However always think of it as an assist rather than a substitute. Though technology may be helpful in brainstorming, content drafting, and strategy refinement, a human presence is still required to guarantee authenticity, accuracy, and ethical conduct in marketing efforts.

View the presentation slides here!

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