Frequently Asked Questions
Answers to common questions asked by our current and prospective partners.
What is it that GSM does, exactly?
We do marketing to grow your business. We specialize in the financial, retirement, and investment industry, but we’re happy to branch out into other worlds as needed.
More specifically, we help with three key things.
- Your message. We help make sure your company is successfully, effectively communicating your value to current and prospective clients. Experience and credentials are important, but they don’t matter if your clients don’t understand what you bring to the table. We help bridge the gap between your world of jargon and the impactful messages your clients can actually understand.
- Your presentation. We help make sure your brand presence looks good, so prospective partners doing their due diligence on you can feel confident that they’re going into business with a professional, institutional-grade partner.
- Your reach. We help you connect with—and maintain—the relationships you need with clients and partners to grow your business.
Our services include: consulting, web design and development, graphic design for print or digital, marketing strategy, SEO, lead generation, custom video production, white-label video production, email marketing, and more!
Why work with GSM instead of any other marketing company?
In commoditized markets, it can be difficult to establish your voice and stand out from the crowd. You need to bring your marketing “A-game” each and every day. That requires a thoughtful battle plan and an experienced, knowledgeable team to execute it.
There are loads of generic marketing companies who can put together pretty, glossy marketing assets but have no idea what you’re talking about when you say “PPA” or “Cash Balance Contribution Limits” or “3(16) Services.”
GSM Marketing was born and raised in the retirement, financial, and investment industry. We already speak your language. That means we can not only understand your company’s strengths and goals, we can give you meaningful feedback about how to prioritize and build strategic marketing tactics around those strengths.
Why work with GSM instead of doing all my own marketing in-house?
It takes resources to create, maintain, and update a strong and dynamic website, communications program, lead generation program, and more.
Many growing companies we encounter have a hard time staffing and training an internal expert team to meet this critical need. That can be an inefficient process that eats into both time and money you would otherwise be re-investing into your company’s core services.
That’s where we come in. We already know the language and excell at marketing work. We can step in as needed to augment your internal marketing team when they need a helping hand, or we can be your entire marketing team so you don’t have to worry about managing any of it yourself. Either way, we’re happy to help.
How will GSM's marketing services benefit my company?
GSM’s services can help your business grow.
When companies learn about you, a bit of due diligence is usually their next move. The typical first step is to visit your website. They do this not before they call you, but before they decide if they are going to call you at all.
Effective marketing ensures you get that call, get the meeting, get the RFP. Website drafting and development is just one of many essential marketing services GSM can help you get right; we’ll help you set the table for new business development.
How does GSM approach new projects and clients?
We see ourselves as “relationship-based” rather than “project-based.”
Lots of marketing companies are interested in getting hired, doing the project, getting paid, and marking it “complete.” While we’re happy to do projects large and small, we’re more interested in building an ongoing relationship with you so we can help you drive results over time. Our goal is to help you establish a stronger brand and more engaging conversations with clients, partners and prospect.
You’ll see this mindset in action in all the ways we interact with you. It’s this fundamental alignment to business goals that sets us apart. We know that’s what drives your business.
Will your marketing help me win new business?
Yes! But new business isn’t the only audience we’ll help you connect with.
We believe that, while it’s obviously important to attract new business, it’s just as important to retain the business you have. After all, if you lose business out the back door while attracting new business through the front door, the net result may not equal growth. We’ll help you defend your turf.