Marketing coaches are often confused with fractional chief marketing officers (fractional CMOs), marketing consultants, and freelance marketing support. However, they are not the same things.

This guide explains what marketing coaches do and how they can help financial companies achieve their promotional and sales goals.

What do Financial Marketing Coaches Help With?

A marketing coach can support your efforts to:

• Identify marketing, communication, and promotional problems within your firm
• Develop comprehensive marketing plans
• Offer fresh insights on how you can brand and promote your financial business
• Review content, social media, and email marketing efforts
• Educate your team on various aspects of marketing.

Everything your marketing coach does should be in line with helping you achieve your company’s business goals.

What Do Marketing Coaches Do?

It’s all in the name: Marketing coaches coach financial professionals on:

• Improving marketing knowledge and ability
• Aligning marketing activities with business goals
• Ensuring you’re doing everything possible to grow your financial services business.

Good marketing coaches use a customized approach to advising financial companies. An engagement should begin with the coach asking questions to learn about your brand and business. They’ll want to know your target audience, unique value proposition, business goals, the marketing resources you already have, and anything else needed to understand your current situation, future goals, and issues with your marketing efforts.

The best coaches understand that every financial services business is unique, with its own approach, goals, and challenges. They consider everything they learn through these initial conversations. Then, they help you prioritize what your organization should focus on, such as learning the fundamentals of marketing, building or refining your brand, improving your current marketing strategy, or enhancing your digital presence.

A marketing coach will guide you to the marketing solutions that are right for you and possibly recommend resources to get work done. It’s unlikely that a coach will do actual marketing tasks for you.

What Services Does a Marketing Coach Typically Offer?

Marketing coaches are adaptable, and most working in the financial sector can support asset managers, wealth managers, and other types of financial businesses. If a marketing coach cannot demonstrate experience in your financial area of expertise, move on to someone who does.

Central to their mission is helping financial service businesses overcome growth challenges. They are typically leveraged to offer a fresh perspective and create novel marketing strategies to attract clients. The services they usually provide include:

• Developing or refreshing business marketing plans
• Setting up better marketing procedures and systems
• Coming up with compelling lead magnets
• Improving content marketing programs
• Selecting tools for team collaboration and communication
• Setting specific, actionable objectives and goals
• Helping financial businesses stay focused on marketing, which is not a top priority at many firms.

In short, marketing coaches provide what financial companies need to succeed. An engagement with a marketing coach can be once and done or revisited over time to get fresh insights for ongoing improvement.

Benefits of Partnering with a Marketing Coach

Hiring a marketing coach can help turn around an underperforming financial services company. A coach can provide:

• Guidance. A coach can offer a fresh perspective on your marketing efforts and identify gaps and issues.
• Strategy. Coaches often develop comprehensive marketing strategies aligned with their overall business goals.
• Goal setting. Many financial service businesses lack documented business goals. A good marketing coach can help set them up and develop methods for tracking success.
• Fresh insights. Coaches offer an external perspective to help businesses move past stalemates hindering growth and focus on marketing efforts that will pay off.
• Organizational alignment. With the help of a coach, financial companies can stop wasting time on random marketing tactics and pay attention to those the people they’re targeting will respond to.
• Reporting and analysis. Financial firms are all about the numbers, but many do not bring that numerical expertise to their marketing. Coaches can provide training on tracking marketing metrics, reporting on them, and drawing meaningful insights from them.
• Work-life balance. Marketing coaches often serve as life coaches. They can help you find efficiencies in your marketing efforts, resulting in a better balance between professional and personal life.
• Enhanced creativity. A lot of financial marketing is same old, same old. A coach can help explore ways to make your promotional efforts stand out.
• Improved branding. Similarly, a lot of financial brands are a lot alike. A coach can provide a fresh perspective on differentiating your organization from its competitors.

Ultimately, your financial firm may not realize all these benefits of working with a marketing coach, but it’s essential to be aware of all the possibilities.

Selecting the Best Marketing Coach for Your Financial Service Business

Here are the steps to find the right marketing coach for your operation.

1. Measure the cost of hiring a coach against potential benefits

Before bringing on a coach, do a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether it makes sense for your business. Work with a prospective coach before hiring them to help figure out how much value you can expect to get if you do business with them. A reputable coach can help you identify a reasonable return on your investment in them.

2. Review the marketing coach’s background

When choosing a coach, it’s critical to review their previous work, especially in your area of financial services. A coach should be able to demonstrate:

• A solid understanding of current financial marketing strategies and trends
• Solid experience in financial branding
• Excellent communication and data analysis skills
• Familiarity with advanced marketing tools.

3. Set the foundation for a successful coaching relationship

Building a solid rapport with your marketing coach is also critical for success. Make sure your initial interactions are effective. If not, address communication and other issues that could be getting in the way.

Working with a Marketing Coach: The Final Word

To find success with a marketing coach, it’s critical to consider all the ways they can help your business achieve success, including:

• Identifying issues with your marketing efforts
• Offering a fresh, outside perspective on your promotions
• Setting marketing objectives and goals
• Crafting strategies that will resonate with the people your financial firm is targeting
• Identifying people and agencies to handle your marketing
• Automating your promotional efforts
• Coming up with a comprehensive marketing plan.

Do you need help deciding which marketing coach services are right for you? Contact Dan Sondhelm to explore your options.