Xponent Marketing is not a single product. It’s not something we sell on a 10-CD set, or teach you at a $1,500 Boot Camp. It’s our entire marketing philosophy; and we’re glad to share it with you because our business is helping financial advisors like you become Top Producers.

Xponent Marketing is different from traditional marketing. The main distinction is that traditional marketing focuses on locating people who are ready to buy immediately. The problem is that this generates a relatively small number of qualified prospects. No matter what the product, the pool of prospects who may not buy today, but who are eventually going to buy is obviously many, many times larger. Xponent Marketing focuses on this larger group.

Traditional marketing is like fishing with a hook and line. Xponent Marketing is like fishing with a net.

The first step to understanding the concept of Xponent Marketing is to analyze the Buying Continuum:


Xponent Marketing helps you look at all sales prospects between two points on the buying continuum, one to the left (A) and one to the right (Z).

The A prospects are at the very beginning of the buying continuum. They aren't ready to make a purchase or at least don’t feel the need to do so any time soon. They may be qualified; they just aren’t ready yet.

The Z prospects are at the other end of the sales process. Either through desire or necessity; they are ready to buy. Traditional marketing focuses on the X, Y and Z end of the scale. These are the prospects that respond immediately to your direct mail, or make an appointment to meet with you right after your seminars.

You may be asking, “What’s wrong with prospects that are ready to buy?” Nothing, of course. But the problem you face as a financial advisor is there just aren’t that many people who are ready or willing to become clients right away. If you were selling pizzas or dry cleaning services, there would be a much larger percentage of prospects at that end of the buying continuum.

Xponent Marketing focuses on those prospects at the midpoint on the continuum all the way over to X. This doesn’t mean you are eliminating those probable buyers at X, Y, and Z. Instead, you are going to structure a marketing offer that will also appeal to those people who are not quite ready yet. If your mailing list is targeted properly, everyone who receives your offer will be qualified to work with you. What we are talking about here is their readiness to buy – and their willingness to buy from you.

Take a look at the next graphic:


There are three conditions to every sale:

1. You can never have a sale unless your prospect is ready to buy. Remember that some sales are situational, such as replacing a flat tire. A buyer has no choice but to act. Other sales are discretionary, but the buyer has still determined he must have your product or service.
2. Prospects must be able to buy. Most people won't seriously consider buying until they know they have the ability Sometimes a transaction just isn’t possible under any circumstances. Targeting your prospects correctly should eliminate most prospects that are unable to work with you in some capacity.
3. The prospect has to be willing to buy from you. If you are utilizing a carefully developed direct mail campaign, your prospects should be age qualified – giving you a prospect that is ready for your services. They should also be income or asset qualified, which gives them the ability to use your services. Now you just need to make them willing to hire you!

The key concept is to create an offer that will draw responses from a wider section of the buying continuum. Acquire has developed a lead generation program you can use exactly for this purpose. It is a very simple, but very effective process. We send a low risk offer to a prequalified Age and Income mailing list. Many more people will respond to an on offer like this than one that requires them to imme­diately call your office to make an appointment. As a result, you have a much larger pool of qualified prospects to work with. Take a look at the following chart to see how the perceived risk of an offer affects the response:

It makes perfect sense -- the lower the risk, the higher the re­sponse. If you use our low risk offer, the prospects that were already close to making a buying decision will still quickly make appointments. You aren’t excluding the X, Y and Z probable buyers. However, by reducing the risk, you will also uncover a larger number of qualified prospects -- prospects that you would have missed with a higher risk offer -- who may not quite be ready to buy yet.

What do you do with the rest of the prospects that aren't ready to buy? You teach them to buy from you. This is the real meat of Xponent marketing. You move uncommitted prospects along the buying continuum until they are ready and willing to buy from you. How? By using a Drip Marketing program.

Basically, you continue to market to these prospects with a steady ‘drip’ of messages. Financial articles, white papers and follow up postcards all work well. Whatever you choose, the materials you use in your drip marketing campaign must demonstrate your knowledge and heighten your credibility. The crucial thing is to keep your name in front of them.

Newsletters are an excellent drip marketing tool, but many advisors simply don’t have the time or resources to produce their own newsletter on a regular basis. At Acquire, we have created an extremely effective Drip Marketing Newsletter package. It is a complete, turn-key system. We deliver a professionally written financial newsletter to your prospects on a monthly basis. Each issue is personalized with your bio and contact information. The articles are not ‘how-to’ in nature. In fact, the copy is crafted in a manner that dictates the next logical step the reader should take is to call you for a consultation.

Each monthly newsletter brings you a bit closer to the prospect and establishes you as the financial expert in your area. You become the benchmark by which your competitors are judged. Some prospects will take longer to move through the process than others; but each contact you make with them should nudge them closer to the “Z” end of the buying continuum. When they finally reach that point, your chances of being the advisor they are willing to work with are exponentially increased because of your drip marketing efforts. Over a period of time you become their natural choice.

Xponent Marketing has helped hundreds of advisors take their practices to the next level. We can do the same for you.

If you have questions, or would like additional information on Xponent Marketing, give us a call today at 800-771-9898.