Marketing-Minded Financial Planners, Join Your Professional Organization to Get Free PublicityWritten by Ned Steele
Unlike some professionals like lawyers and doctors, financial planners aren't required to be members of a professional association. However, if you want to take advantage of a great way to get free publicity, you marketing-minding financial professionals will join an association like Financial Planning Association or Society of Financial Service Professionals.Get active first in your local chapter, then nationally. Being active in a professional association is number one way for a financial planner to get media coverage. When media folks need experts, they often go straight to associations for help. This is a particularly popular tactic among local newspaper or television reporters who want a local person to comment on a national story. Has stock market had a huge rally? They'll want a local stock-picker to share their thoughts, not a New York City brokerage chief. That's when a reporter will call association.
| | Two Don'ts for Financial Planners Seeking Free PublicityWritten by Ned Steele
Many of my clients have had misguided perception that they won't be able to get media coverage from a publication that their larger competitors advertise in. Nothing could be further from truth.Most respectable publications erect a wall separating advertising and editorial (news/feature) coverage. Reporters and editors are specifically instructed to not give preferential treatment to advertisers. It's one of first things you learn in Journalism 101. Many larger publications are so cautious about this; they end up actually being less likely to write articles about or containing quotes from advertisers. This leads to two very important "don'ts": 1. Don't give up hope of getting quoted in or writing an article for a publication just because you don't advertise in it.
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