Industry Leader Interview, with Michelle Marsh, Chief Visionary Officer, Retirement Plan Concepts & Services
Dawn Hynes Question:
For the TPA that is not doing any of this, what would you say to them in terms of taking baby steps to get into a position where they start to experience the kind of success you’re enjoying?
Michelle Marsh Answer:
Obviously, the salesperson comes at a cost but at the same time you may be able to find someone, a recent retiree who doesn’t want to be fully retired for baby steps. If you’re still willing to do sales yourself, they could bring them on part-time, and pay them more of a commission. Either no or low salary and base everything on sales.
As far as marketing, whether you go outside or stay inside, I think the issue that I found with the marketing firm that we do partner with, just as a consultant, they know a lot about where to be. They do a lot of the searches for content and what content we should be producing so we get found because people are doing searches for that content. But they don’t really know how to write the content. Fortunately, my internal marketing person is not an industry expert, but she will take information that we have or information that she does find via Google and other methods and create it. I then wordsmith it to make sure it’s the messaging we want to provide.
Today, with Google and other regional or high level TPAs that are putting out content, there is a lot of information that is not unique because it is all regurgitating the law. But, it’s a good place to start for a marketing person who can take that information, create it in your own words and repurpose it. We do some links to NAPA, some links to ASPPA so sometimes our content isn’t linked to an article, which is fine.
We don’t produce 100% of our content. I think that’s another thing that a lot of people don’t understand is that you can produce no content and just post daily links to content that exists.