What do we know about financial advisor digital marketing? Every financial advisor in the country has a website, but only a small percentage of financial advisors benefit from digital marketing in ways that produce new revenues for their firms.
What is missing? Perhaps it is a commitment to an Inbound Marketing process that is much different than the Outbound Marketing processes that they have used in the past.
What is the difference? Outbound Marketing business practices (cold calling, direct mail, networking) are based on financial advisors initiating contact with investors. This was always an invasive form of marketing when investors did not want the contact.
You might say, “old habits die hard” even when those habits were not the highest and best use of financial advisors’ time and money. Back in the day, there were not many alternatives and many of these traditional marketing practices were negatively impacted by the pandemic
On the other hand, Inbound Marketing is relatively new. These business practices are based on investors initiating contact with financial advisors. This is the same way they contact other professionals (CPAs, attorneys) they depend on for specialized advice and services.
What facilitates Inbound Marketing is the Internet that investors use to find and research financial advisors. Just about anyone can enter keywords in Google and find what they are looking for. And, once they use the Internet to find what they are looking for, they can use it to research what they found. Plus, they decide when they want to be contacted.
To understand the power of the Internet and how it impacts financial advisors, all you have to consider is how you use it to find service providers and information.
More Than Just Strangers
The single biggest challenge for most financial advisors is producing a steady flow of new prospects they can talk to each month. Solve this problem and they have healthy businesses with increasing revenues and profitability. If they don’t solve the problem they are stuck with smaller client counts that limit their revenues, profitability, and the future valuations of their businesses.
A simple example of the impact of digital marketing is dividing investors into two groups - those that know your firm’s name and those that don’t.
Those that they do know your name will enter it into a search engine to learn more about you. Those that don’t know you will enter a variety of keywords in a search engine to find advisors they can talk to. Either way, digital marketing plays a vital part in their processes for finding and researching financial advisors.
Step one in this process is to understand the five primary reasons why so many financial advisors are using digital marketing business practices to expand their firms.
Lead Flow
It takes leads to produce new clients and it takes new clients to produce positive ROI. Consequently, many advisors are focused on the number of leads that are produced by their websites each month.
You might conclude that this is the one and only reason to use digital marketing, but that would be misleading. There are several other equally important reasons that impact your results. For example, you still have to convert leads into prospects and prospects into revenue-producing clients. Digital marketing for wealth management advisors can help.
Digital marketing strategies can be tailored to facilitate the movement of investors through your various sales funnels.
Research Matters
It is important to note that finding you on the Internet is just step one of the processes that investors use to select financial advisors. You may call it a sales funnel. Investors may call it due diligence.
Now that they have found you their next step is to learn more about your firm and the professionals who work there.
Their first step is to visit your website and review the content. They will spend two to three minutes viewing the information that is most important to them. They may register for a free offer if it is relevant enough.
Many advisors believe the research process is more important than the search process.
Building Brand Awareness
A large number of financial advisors have told us they have been in business for years, but their brands are relatively invisible. They want a cost-effective way to build brand awareness.
The Internet and digital marketing help them achieve the visibility they are seeking. And, the more visible they are the more credible they tend to be in the minds of investors who are seeking financial advisors.
You might even say financial advisors who are relatively invisible are riskier choices than advisors who have significant visibility. You might also say this is the very definition of building a recognizable brand.
First Impression
A high percentage of investors form their first impressions of financial advisors based on what they see on the Internet. This starts with names, logos, and the messaging that appears on the home pages of financial advisor websites (above the fold).
This first impression can impact the amount of time they spend on the websites of financial advisors. The more time they spend the higher the probability they will respond to a free offer or submit their contact information so advisors can schedule initial interviews.
First impressions are vitally important when there are so many advisors competing with each other.
Competitive Advantage
Another role for digital marketing is to make your website and your online visibility competitive with other financial advisors in your marketplace.
We assume investors will visit several financial advisor websites to identify the ones they want to interview. This means your website has to be competitive with the other sites that are visited by investors. And, since we don’t know which sites are being visited, your site should be optimized to be competitive with all of your primary competitors. This could range from the wirehouses down to relatively small, independently owned RIAs.
There is a second form of competitive advantage. Some investors who visit your site are seeking information and not financial advisors. That comes later when they have satisfied their need for information.
These leads will end up on a drip list that will receive monthly or bi-monthly communications from you until they are ready to schedule interviews. You have a competitive advantage as long as you are a source of relevant information.
