“You can transform your communications group to a marketing powerhouse in 18 months!”

What Marketing Is and Can Be

We’ve tried, trust me.

Yet, in scouring the course catalogs of the nation’s leading business schools we have failed to come up with a single graduate marketing class in “snappy brochure making.”
Yet so much of financial services marketing today is nothing more than that—sales support.

We believe strongly that the “marketing communications as marketing” model that dominates the industry today not only misuses scarce human capital, but in the end, it fails to provide the very support that the sales engine craves.

How many times have you heard or said the following, “too little, too late” or “it doesn’t work.”

Support for Our Position

• Ignoring the thousands of regulatory communications, did you know that the NASD reviewed nearly 90,000 pieces of sales literature last year? (87,000 actually)
• With nearly 400,000 financial advisors in America, that means a unique piece of sales collateral is being created for every 4 advisors! (Or one for every 3,500 men, women and children)
• Further, nearly 30 percent of the literature printed and warehoused today is ultimately thrown away? (And after that, much of it will be updated, printed, stored and thrown away each quarter)

AND NOW…the results of "Investment Management Marketing: Beyond the Collateral,"  a study co-authored by SwanDog and FRC, confirms that marketers at asset management firms have been focusing on the production of marketing collateral and a limited number of other functions to their detriment.

All of those people creating “stuff” that the sales force says they can’t use and the advisors say they don’t need coming at the expense of gathering client information, analyzing and segmenting your customer base, developing metrics that drive your business, developing brand awareness versus name awareness and building meaningful marketing that leads to a business result, not a sigh of relief. 

That’s where SwanDog comes in—we help get you facing in the right direction, making sure you have the right organization, the right people, the right training and the right tools to move marketing from cost center to contributor.

We’re Believers in a strong Sales and Marketing Partnership/Culture

After hearing all of this, a close wholesaler friend of ours suggested that is sounded a lot like Revenge of the Nerds. Relax. We’re not advocating a marketing coup d’etat. In fact, I have yet to meet a sales guy who wouldn’t welcome the support (both directionally and strategically) that a first class marketing organization can provide. When presented with the issue, most say “I’d love it. I’m just not getting it”. That’s why we not only teach marketers to get the most of their sales force, but teach sales forces to get the most from their marketers.