Marketing is often described as a “necessary evil.”

You know that you need to reach beyond your circle of influenceto capture new business, but it's not what you enjoy about being anadvisor.

You enjoy the expertise that you've forged after years in thebusiness. You like developing rapport with clients and tackling theunique challenges that any given client might bring. Marketing justdoesn't give you that same satisfaction.

If we're being honest, a lot of marketing tactics feel downrightsleazy.

Mass mailers. Off-shoring blanket cold calling. Internet “squeeze” pages.

You value dignity

Diving deep into the marketing world can start to feel like youare moving farther and farther away from what makes you, well, you.You feel that clients respect you for your professionalism and yourcandor. You don't want to tarnish that with a cheesy marketingcampaign.

Put in terms that might ring even true for advisors, you valuedignity. You talk to your clients about their dignity and howplanning for their future helps them keep it.

An advisor's job is to provide that guidance, and serving asthat expert means running your business in a way that reflects theseriousness of the work.

As a result, advisors shy away from opportunities to grow theirbusiness because they fear that they might have to sacrifice theirdignity if they take an aggressive approach to creating explosivegrowth in their business. This fear is reasonable, but it ispossible to market your business with dignity if you approach theprocess with the right mindset and the right plan.

Staying on brand

For every injury attorney that flashes a check with a scrollingnumber and throws out a tagline in his commercial, there is onethat instead uses airtime to talk about community causes and hisclient's stories. Where one rehashes the bare minimum for acommercial, the other accepts that building relationships can taketime and chooses instead to highlight his connection to the peoplehe serves.

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It's the same tactic executed with very different approaches.One drips with marketing sleaze while the other is sincere andreflects positively on the brand behind it.

Virtually every marketing vehicle available to you can beexecuted with the kind of style and dignity that matches you andyour business. The reason you see a lot of bad marketing is becausegood marketing is frankly hard to do. It takes time. It takes work.And sometimes it takes a great investment to achieve the qualitythat takes the experience your clients have with you in person andextends it to your marketing.

When the marketing process is handled with thoughtfulnessand care, the end result is a pipeline full of qualified prospects.(Photo: iStock)

When you do this successfully, a prospect who enters yourbusiness through this marketing will have a seamless experiencewith your brand from first impression all the way through years ofservice.

In our space, as an appointment-setting firm, this is the firstconversation that we often have with clients. Most advisors havehad brushes with cold calling in the past, and by and large most ofthose experience are probably negative. Phone calls from off-shoresales associates turn off prospects. An untrained sales associate,regardless of the language they speak, doesn't speak with the poiseand professionalism that you want to be known for.

So you don't cold call, and you don't work with appointmentsetters because you're worried about losing that dignity.

Here's how we tackled that challenge:

• We use an extensive storyboarding process tocapture an advisor's story for our sales associates to use whenthey call.
• We train our advisors to speak as if they were sittingin your office, representing your business the way youwant to be represented.
• We evaluate set appointments, asking advisorsto rate how well they fit the target audience so that we canconsistently bring in high value prospects that meet an advisor'scriteria.
• We provide sales coaching to advisors so thatthey can expertly tackle the unique sales opportunity that a setappointment presents.

When the process is handled with thoughtfulness and care, theend result is a pipeline full of qualified prospects.

The broader picture

You can take the lessons that we've learned from appointmentsetting and apply them to any of your marketing efforts, from yourwebsite to your drip campaigns. As you focus on sales andservice, bring in experts that have the skill and the reputation tobuild marketing vehicles representative of your business. It mighttake more effort to reach the level of quality that you desire, butyour brand will be better for it.

So rather than shy away from marketing for the sake of yourdignity, use your standards to push your new business efforts tonew heights.

Related: Optimize your lead-handlingprocess