Marketing Wiz is a platform that Kotak MF and Wealth Forum launched about 3 years ago, as an idea sharing platform that encourages IFAs to think and execute high impact, affordable marketing initiatives to win clients and boost growth. Marketing has traditionally been a weak link for many IFAs - not because there aren't enough bright ideas among our IFAs - but because of a fear that marketing costs too much money and therefore marketing is not for me.
In addition to sharing ideas and strategies on our web platform, last year we introduced the Marketing Wiz awards - which recognize excellence in marketing initiatives among IFAs - and thereby serve as a powerful motivator to all IFAs to embrace marketing as a critical business activity and spur business growth the way our champions have done.
This year - the second year of the Marketing Wiz awards - has seen an even better response to our self nomination process than last year's inaugural effort. We had 5 winners this year opposed to 3 last year - and the best part is each champion's efforts shed light on different aspects of marketing - all of which collectively can help you turbo charge your business growth.
The Marketing Wiz Awards 2017 were given away at the special Awards Nite which was an integral part of the 8th annual Wealth Forum Platinum Circle Advisors Conference on 7th July at Mumbai. The awards were given by Kotak MF's leadership team including:
Mr. Nilesh Shah, MD
Mr. Kaiyomurz Daver, Head of Marketing and
Ms. Lakshmi Iyer, Head of Fixed Income and Products
Guerrilla Marketing
Our first marketing wiz of 2017 is an IFA who has perfected the art of guerrilla marketing. Guerrilla marketing is especially relevant for IFAs, as it focuses on high impact, low cost promotional strategies that require imagination and sharp thinking more than fancy budgets.
This champion IFA operates in a small city with a population of 500,000 people - but this has not come in the way of him doubling his business in the last 2 years to a very impressive level of over Rs.100 crAuM and a SIP book in excess ofRs. 1 crore from 2400 live SIPs.
His innovative guerrilla marketing ideas have got him half page ads in prominent newspapers and huge hoardings in strategic spots across his city for upto 3-4 months a year, at a fraction of the cost one would otherwise have to pay for such visibility.
To know how he managed this smart deal, click here
Our second Marketing Wiz is a firm that has perfected the art and science of niche marketing - of opting to be a big fish in a small pond rather than a small fish in a big pond. They opted to shut their doors to 99.5% of Indian savers, and focussed only on a tiny 0.5% segment. But, they've done it so well that by addressing only one customer segment, they have scaled up their business from a 9 crAuM in Mar 2013 to 202 crs by Mar 2017.
But, that's not the reason that Hum Fauji Initiatives - a unique advisory firm by faujis for faujis - is being recognised as a Marketing Wiz. It is the tremendous foresight and marketing acumen that HFI is currently displaying to set the tone for its next leg of growth, which is what makes it a true Marketing Wiz.
HFI today serves over 1100 fauji families from all over the country and abroad, but sees a much bigger opportunity in the years ahead. Between the three forces and the paramilitary forces, India has around 50,000 fauji families - and HFI sees itself uniquely placed in this market segment, having established its credibility in this segment very well.
Its next leg of growth has to be driven by the organization and the brand - not its promoter, believes Col Sanjeev Govila, the force behind HFI. HFI therefore conducted an extensive brand audit to understand how its customers actually perceive it, and compared this with how it wishes to be perceived, if it has to realize its growth ambitions. The audit showed, with the help of numerous focus group sessions, that HFI is seen as an expert and as exclusively for the armed forces. But HFI wants more in terms of perception, if it has to make that big jump from a thousand fauji families to 10,000 fauji families. Beyond expertise and exclusivity to the armed forces, HFI wants to be seen by its target segment as experienced, approachable, accessible, youthful and a provider of comprehensive financial solutions. And importantly, a brand that moves beyond the promoter's personal brand equity, and evolves into a trustworthy ally that helps India's fauji families in their financial journeys.
Here's the story of how Brand HFI is growing into an independent, vibrant, youthful and approachable entity, beyond the image of its promoter, Col Sanjeev Govila
When you run a high quality fee based financial planning service, you know that there are segments of the market you won't be competing in. But if you are really hungry for growth and at the same time do not wish to dilute your core proposition in this quest, you come up with intelligent customer segmentation strategies that allow you to pursue both.
Last year, PeakAlpha won a Marketing Wiz award for their efforts in engaging women investors. This year, their new ideas on segmentation serve as fantastic lessons for every advisor who is grappling with the challenge of pursuing high growth aspirations without diluting your core proposition.
I quote, verbatim from their self nomination entry:
"PeakAlpha has always believed in acquiring customers by the busload. Though we believe that client referrals are a great way to acquire customers, we also believe that it is a passive customer acquisition strategy. For a company that employs nearly 30 people and is hungry for scale, we look for opportunities that expand our client base exponentially, not linearly.
We started two new initiatives this year to scale our business:
PeakAlpha has built networks with more than 100 corporates along the course of its 12-year journey. These relationships were built to conduct financial education sessions for their employees. We have principally built our client base through this mechanism. This year, we decided to take this relationship one step forward. We spoke to corporates about offering NPS and group medical insurance to its employees. NPS and group insurance would not only help employees and corporates to save tax, but would also give Peak Alpha the opportunity to acquire a large database of employees. We could then engage one-on-one to help them manage their money.
PeakAlpha has always charged an advisory fee for its comprehensive financial planning service called PeakPlanner. However, this fee proved high for prospective clients who just wanted to get a start on investing but were not yet ready for a comprehensive financial plan. Often, we met retirees who were looking to generate a tax- free income stream, and couldn't afford a high advisory fee.
We found these two categories of prospects very attractive. Surprisingly, both these categories were largely ignored. We found our "Blue Ocean" as Nilesh Shah has often said, staring us in the face. We decided not to offer our services for free, but to offer a scaled-down version of our PeakPlanner service called PeakStart for new investors and PeakRejuve for senior citizens. We charged a fraction of our PeakPlanner fees for these services.
PeakStart and PeakRejuve became stepping stones for customers to eventually migrate to our comprehensive financial planning service. Even a simple tax planning exercise was done on our state-of-the art, proprietary financial planning application, backed by our well-known mutual fund ranking mechanism PeakFilter. Customers had the ability to log in, check portfolios, review changes in expenses, income flows, tax gaps, asset allocation charts, and enjoy a disciplined approach to professionally conducted portfolio reviews by certified planners. This was a very high value add service at a low-cost structure, an unbeatable combination. Furthermore, this group of largely ignored customers had never experienced such a high level of handholding and care.
To further engage with young employees, we actively participated in corporate induction programs and acquired customers for PeakStart. We educated freshers and first-time investors to experience the benefits of squirrelling away money in a disciplined manner. It enabled them to generate a higher post-tax income and created wealth for the future. Most importantly, they developed an interest in investing, and encouraged their co-workers to do so. Each meeting was scheduled when the prospective client could bring in 5 or more friends or co-workers. We allowed further discount on the fees for each prospect who converted.
For PeakRejuve, we conducted workshops for senior citizens and engaged with organizations that addressed this group of people, such as Silver Talkies, Silver Surfers Club and senior citizen residential homes. We contributed articles to websites and publications that addressed this demographic. We also encouraged PeakStart clients to refer their parents to PeakRejuve.
By creating this limited-scope service for our prospects, we made it affordable for a large group of people to access our services. We could address the immediate, specific issues that they were grappling with. We were also able to offer them the ability to 'test the waters' and demonstrate our expertise by offering them a very satisfactory experience at a low price point. In effect, we were upselling our services using PeakStart and PeakRejuve. Gradually, these customers appreciated the value of our relationship and were ready to move on to our more full-service, sophisticated PeakPlanner offering.
This is what a customer wrote to us yesterday about his parents who were availing our PeakRejuve service- "Dear PeakAlpha team. You have been largely responsible for making my parents tremendously happy, comfortable and settled. My sisters and I owe you a great debt, which you can call on anytime. Many, many thanks."
Amen to that. After all, these are the moments the company and its employees live for!"
Our Marketing Wiz - for the second year in a row - for their intelligent customer segmentation strategy:
Goal based planning is a way of life for quality advisors. But what sets this young advisor apart is the effort he made to engage with his clients on the goal itself rather than just the plan for a goal.
Education planning for children occupies centre stage for most parents and yet they don't really start collecting all the information they really need until its too late to plan, but just on time to execute.
Our young advisor went far beyond routine goal planning to create an absolutely unique calendar that serves as a highly effective call to action to all parents to start engaging with their advisor on planning for their childrens' education goals
To know more about this unique initiative, click here
Most marketing campaigns around financial planning focus on the process and the discipline that the firm adheres to, in order to help you realise your financial goals. Here is a campaign that did something very different - and did it really well. It got clients to share actual stories of the outcome of this firm's efforts - and not a single word from the firm on what it actually does.
We all know that well executed financial plans can change people's lives for the better. Here is a campaign that focuses on just one powerful thought - on how the lives of real clients has been really changed for the better - in the clients' own words.
We are talking about the highly engaging, high impact campaign from International Money Matters, called The Richer Life. Here is how Shweta Jain - the key driver of this campaign, describes what the firm did and why:
"Our intent as a business is to help our clients achieve their goals. We realised this was a powerful thing because our advice changed lives. We had clients come tell us that they sleep better at night knowing we are watching their money. This led to the campaign where we focussed on the stories of clients of various ages and lifestyles to share their experience, their lives. Our effort to make their life richer by letting them focus on what is most important to them was at the center of the theme.
We created a series of 6 client videos, each client had a different background, circumstances and goals. The clients have spoken as they are in real life, there were no scripts, no prompts; just open ended questions and they were free to share what they wanted. The locations were chosen based on their comfort as well- so you would see either a farm or their homes or their studio. We wanted to make sure the client is comfortable sharing her/his story.
In addition to putting these videos up on youtube and promoting them through social media, we also created comprehensive merchandise around The Richer Life - including a story booklet covering all stories in brief, Coasters, Notepads, Visiting cards, Signatures on emails, Standees at events, Event decoration in line with this theme and of course a page on our website for The Richer Life.
The campaign was also used in our 15 year celebration client events in the 3 cities we have offices in- Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi. The theme of the event was The Richer life and we showed the videos there where the rest of the evening was covered focusing on IMM, the industry and also 2 clients sharing their stories on stage with the rest of our clients.
The Impact:
We all know stories are powerful, but just how powerful? We started the campaign on 15th August 2016 - where we shared the first video on social media/ on whatsapp with our clients. The response was tremendous. They loved the concept, story and of course the execution. We have had emotional moments with clients because of some of the things mentioned in a particular video. I for one, always tear up when I see them, it is that overwhelming! Connecting with our clients on a deeper level is something we have been able to achieve thanks to this campaign. Some new clients, especially who have spent less time with us were hesitant to share more details about them other than their money we manage for them - they have opened up to us with greater ease, because of this campaign. Our advisors are more confident because this gives them a very relevant conversation topic. They feel more responsible when they see the direct impact they have on clients. We also usually have prospects asking us to share some client's reference where they can chat with them and understand how they feel about us; this campaign makes it easier for them to have it handy and also builds trust much faster.
Marketing Campaign Excellence: International Money Matters, Bangalore
All content in Marketing Wiz is created by Wealth Forum and should not be construed as views of Kotak MF.
