As founder, CEO and adviser at Newcastle Financial Planning Group (NFPG), Daniel Brown isn’t a marketing consultant with great ideas. He’s a practitioner who built his practice from the ground up and made a call very early on that he would be the one to master the marketing game – with the strategic advice of The Measured Marketer.
And master it he has.
The leading financial planner and exemplary business leader, solely established NFPG in 2016, expanding it to a team of 24 and 3 locations over the last three years. His team is responsible for more than $295 million of funds under advice.
“At NFPG and Central Coast Financial Planning Group (CCFPG) our value proposition is simple, we work to our clients’ agenda, develop suitable strategies and offer advice from our financial planning specialists,” Daniel said.
He is also a Specialist Adviser for Capital Property Investment Advisers (CPIA), Fortuity Lending and soon to launch podcast, WhyInvest.
122 new clients + $1.2m in 12 months
Daniel recently participated in a podcast with Stewart Bell, of The Leveraged Advice Firm, to give an insight into the role marketing played in building his success.
When they caught up, Stewart realised he was talking to someone who had two extremely valuable skillsets: understanding the business of advice and understanding how to market it online.
Stewart said the results speak for themselves.
“In the last 12 months alone, Daniel’s marketing efforts with strategic partners The Measured Marketer – spanning weekly content marketing through the blog posts, a major rebranding, Google Ads and more – have resulted in 122 new clients and $1.2m in revenue.”
Strategic marketing partnership delivers results
NFPG employed a number of tactics, strategies and marketing campaigns to generate new, repeat and referred business.
A strategic decision to invest in marketing services with The Measured Marketer, delivered Daniel a tailored strategic marketing plan, rebranded websites with updated content and streamlined company messaging; updated testimonials; and a full suite of complementary social media messaging.
“When you start to understand branding and how clients perceive you, you realise how important it is,” Daniel said.
“I quickly realised I needed to have a brand I was proud of. People are buying the brand.”
Daniel Brown, CEO and adviser at Newcastle Financial Planning Group
The importance of branding
“Working with The Measured Marketer to establish our brand identity we went through a process where we looked at magazines to cars to people to celebrities to identify the elements of our personality.
“If you’re not clear on your personality and the look and feel of your business you don’t have a clear direction or purpose.”
The team updated their online advisor bios, giving clients the ability to research and select the advisor who they feel is right for them; committed to creating more video content to further increase the personalised nature of their service; invested in digital advertising; and are continually making constant improvements to their website, including the addition of educational blogs.
SEO + content, content, content
In depth review and ongoing monitoring of each company’s website SEO has resulted in significant growth in both organic and paid website traffic, in addition to steady engagement across social media platforms.
Educational blogs are drafted in house by the advisers and are guided by current events and client feedback. The marketing team consciously rotates topics ensuring all target markets remain engaged, and cross-promotes where possible to capitalise on each brand’s reach.
“My advice is to start writing and reading about what are you passionate about,” Daniel said. I drafted three articles in about three hours the other day. We find the more personal the content the better the response.
“People don’t want to buy the process they want the outcome, so the words I choose are important – retirement planning – retirement ready, budget, spending plan.”
Social campaigns target leads
Working with The Measured Marketer, Daniel’s businesses run opportunistic advertising and social media campaigns. However, as the businesses now generate sufficient qualified leads on an ongoing basis, the need for campaigns is lessening.
In the second half of 2018, 39 leadswere captured across NFPG and CCFPG, an average of six per month. In the first half of 2019, 126 leadswere captured, an average of 21 per month. In the second half of 2019, we’ve paused all campaigns yet still continue to receive 30 new enquiries per month.
The story behind the number: 122 new clients and $1.2m in revenue
Based on the digital strategies put in place including weekly blog posts and targeted social media posts, Google Ads and updated web content written for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Daniel’s companies showed a progressive increase in enquiries and quality leads.
“There was a build up and it continues today. We’re getting between 20-30 clients a month now. It snowballed at one point. We kept investing and saying how can we do it better?”
Learning from the data
Of course, there’s no point executing digital marketing strategies without assessing the performance of the effort.
The Measured Marketer uses analytic tools to explore data and reports to extract meaningful insights, which can be used to better understand a business and improve its performance.
“Every week we look forward to reading our analytics report from the fantastic team at The Measured Marketer,” Daniel said.
Connect to your customers with data-driven strategies and digital-first marketing solutions from The Measured Marketer. Contact TMM today to discuss how we can help.
