CHANDLER, Ariz. — Ninety percent of advisers concede they are not doing enough to market and publicize their practice, a survey found.
Peak Advisor Alliance of Omaha, Neb., surveyed 170 advisers who work with the practice management coaching company. Forty percent said their biggest challenge is generating new business; 15% cited differentiating themselves in a crowded market.
"You are different, each one of you is different," Steve Sanduski, the managing partner at Peak, told advisers at the company's Excell Meeting here Thursday. "You need to do something to show you're different to make people come do business with you."
One potential tool is social media, but only 52% of advisers said they thought it could help their marketing; 48% said they weren't sure. Forty-eight percent said they considered social media a compliance risk; the same percentage said Finra is overreacting to advisers' use of social media.
Peak, with Cognito, is developing a training platform to help advisers use social media, Sanduski said. "Social media is here to stay, it is not going away," he said. … "The players change, but the evolution and revolution is going forward. This is how the next generation is going to communicate. They are going to be well versed in this type of communication, so we need to be well versed."
Despite the economic downturn, 55% of the advisers surveyed said they hired staff in the past three years. "We are reinvesting back into our business; as some competitors exited or cut expenses, more than half of our members were reinvesting and hiring staff," Sanduski said.
Forty-six percent of the advisers surveyed said that they generated their top clients from a referral. Eighteen percent said they generated them through referrals from a business associate, such as a certified public accountant, or a lawyer.
