Ping Your Way to Better Relationships: 12 Strategies for Making Better Connections

The Power of Pinging

By including relationships marketing in your financial advisor marketing plan, you can increase retention, increase your number of referrals, and win over clients for life. A great way to start is to regularly stay in touch with clients, prospects, and partners through relationship pinging. It can be as simple as an email, or even more elaborate with personalized cards and gifts.

Each year, my team sends out at least six relationship pings, and four referral pings. The results are simply amazing. My email and voice mail in-boxes are flooded with thank-you messages, as is my mail box. When I began relationship pinging 15 years ago, it literally transformed by business—and it can do the same for you!

Keith Farazzi, author of Never Eat Alone, suggests that "if 80 percent of success is, as Woody Allen once said, ‘just showing up’, then 80 percent of building and maintaining relationships is just staying in touch. I call it ‘pinging.’ It’s a quick, casual greeting, and it can be done in an abundance of creative ways."

Top financial advisors know that consistent follow up is one of the easiest and most effective ways to cultivate your business and reach your goals.

Ensure that your financial advisor marketing plan includes a system for regularly pinging prospects, clients, friends, centers of influence, life transition instructors, editors, TV producers and reciprocal referral relationship partners.

The sole purpose of relationship pings is to make a heart-level connection, so make sure that the only business information contained within your pings is limited to what’s required by your compliance department.

Here are some of the best relationship pinging strategies, in my opinion, to include in your financial advisor marketing plan:

Financial Advisor Marketing Strategy #1: The Affluent Women Valentine’s Day Ping

Valentine’s Day is one of the main dates for marketing to and connecting with women, especially those who are widowed or divorced. Each year, I send out countless cards and gifts to connect and reconnect with my female clients.

Financial Advisor Marketing Strategy #2: The Holiday Ping

Relationship holiday pings can include greetings on St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, The first day of Spring, Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year’s, and other special occasions. For instance, at the end of each year I send out a collage of my family. Recently, I was having dinner with a friend who would be an ideal affluent client for most advisors, and he told me that my card won his vote for "best holiday card" last year. Make sure to take the time to make your relationship pings memorable so you can connect and get noticed.

Financial Advisor Marketing Strategy #3: The Birthday Ping

Birthdays are one of the most influential occasions for a relationship ping. If someone makes it into your contact manager, at the very least they should receive a birthday card. For top advisory clients, add a gift to go with the card. You wouldn’t believe how rare that is! You might even want to have a birthday celebration for your closest clients. Invite their most familiar friends and, as an added bonus, you’ll meet other people in your niche market while in a non-threatening, fun environment.

Financial Advisor Marketing Strategy #4: The Anniversary Ping

Annually ping your clients on the date they began working with you. They may even joke that they’re closer to you than they are to their spouses. This strategy is especially powerful with affluent clients.

Financial Advisor Marketing Strategy #5: The Get Well/Sympathy Ping

It’s nice to receive kind words to warm our hearts when life tends to get a little rough. Make sure that each of these kinds of messages is personal, sincere, thoughtful, and meaningful.

Financial Advisor Marketing Strategy #6: The Thank You/Thinking of You Ping

Acknowledging that you are thankful is a superb way to connect to your clients and let others know that you appreciate their gestures, referrals, and business. Letting someone that you’re thinking of them can really brighten their day. You should be sending thank you and thinking of you pings out each and every day.

Financial Advisor Marketing Strategy #7: The Passion Ping

Finding out about the hobbies and interests of your clients and prospects is a great way to help your relationships grow. Once you know their passion—such as golf, airplanes, high-end cars, or yachts—ping them with information that provides insights about and pictures of their hobbies. This ping strategy gives you extra shelf life, and can dramatically intensify your relationships with affluent prospects and clients.

Financial Advisor Marketing Strategy #8: The Thank You for the Referral Ping

This one we discovered by accident. When we began including "Thank you for the Referrals" as a tag line in our quarterly newsletter, we started getting referrals from people who had never given us any. When Craig Randall was named Advisor of the Year in 2007 by Senior Market Advisor, he shared that he got referrals not by asking for them but instead by thanking his clients for them.

Financial Advisor Marketing Strategy #9: The ‘We Love Referrals’ Ping

Have little heart-shaped stickers prepared and incorporate them onto your business cards and/or letters you mail out. Or just send a card or e-mail with a "We Love Referrals" message.

Financial Advisor Marketing Strategy #10: The Let’s Share Referrals Ping

One of the biggest complaints I hear from advisors is that while they often give referrals, they rarely get referrals in return. With this in mind, be sure to set expectations at the establishment of each relationship. When you take the time to identify mutual referral relationship partners who want to share referrals, the result is a win-win for both parties.

Financial Advisor Marketing Strategy #11: The Media Ping

Not that long ago, I started contributing to a few television stations. This then turned into regular TV appearances. In order to stay in touch—and top of mind for future broadcasts—I ping my TV contacts monthly with news, ideas, and to simply say hello.

Financial Advisor Marketing Strategy #12: The Speaking Ping

At any time I’m speaking to a group, my goal is to create a profound relationship while also providing long-term results. With this in mind, I habitually connect with the people who bring me in to speak, as well as to the audience members. The result is better implementation and results for participants as well as more invitations to speak.

Because there are so many opportunities to ping, and because the results are incredibly profound, I urge you to start including relationship pinging in your financial advisor marketing plan without delay. You can even let me know how it works for you and ping me with some of your own successful strategies.

To attend a free marketing webinar go to MillionDollarMarketingSystem

The Marketing Guide for Affluent Women: How to Create a Thriving Advisory Practice Working with Affluent Women, Marketing to Women.

Annette Bau, CFP(r), is the founder of Advisor Marketing Practices and the author of numerous books and products.

She can be reached at Questions@MillionaireSeries.com.