Our 8 tips for financial advisors will dramatically improve your digital marketing results.
We start with descriptions for your digital marketing goals to make sure we are on the same page. This type of marketing uses the Internet to achieve five goals:
- Increase brand awareness
- Disseminate information
- Add to your credibility
- Build distribution lists
- Produce qualified leads
As you can see there are a lot of reasons to make digital marketing an important part of the marketing strategy for your firm’s services.
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What Results?
Every advisor has similar goals that describe what they want investors to do when they visit their websites. However, there is more than one type of investor based on their needs and timing.
The ideal visitors are investors who are actively seeking financial advisors. The best-case scenario is they have an immediate need for financial advice and services. For example, they want to choose three to five advisors for interviews and select their ideal advisors within 60 days.
The next highest quality visitors are investors who have future needs for financial advisors. They are researching local advisors now, but don’t plan to interview them for several months – when they are closer to their retirement dates.
The third type of visitor is the investor who is seeking financial information. They do not plan to interview financial advisors, at least not any time soon. Advisors can provide information that makes it possible to establish relationships with these types of visitors.
Strategy
Website marketing strategies should be designed to address the needs of all three types of visitors.
This means your site has to be competitive with the other websites that are viewed by investors.
Your website has to deliver the information that investors are seeking.
Your website should give investors several reasons to initiate contact with your firm.
Following are 8 digital marketing tips that will increase the productivity of your website:
Tip #1 Time
It is important to know your website has very little time to convert visitors into qualified leads or contacts. For example, the typical visitor on a financial advisor website will spend 10 seconds or less on home pages and 2.5 minutes on websites. This is the amount of time you have to convince visitors to give up their anonymity and submit their contact information. The other tips in this article will help you increase time on your website and your website’s conversion rate (visitors to contacts).
Tip #2 Messaging
The messaging on your website, in particular the home page (above the fold), should be designed to keep visitors on your website. The ideal messaging will resonate with the types of visitors who are visiting your website. Messaging should contain compelling statements that resonate with your ideal types of clients.
Tip #3 Navigation
The navigation on your website is particularly important. Numerous studies show visitors will not search for information. They will exit websites before they will search for information. Most financial advisor websites have similar categories of information: Who We Are, What We Do, Who We Service. The variables are the messaging and content on the pages. Make sure investors can find key information easily and quickly to increase the odds they will contact your firm.
Tip #4 Transparency
Keep in mind investors are visiting multiple websites when they use the Internet to find and research financial advisors. Therefore, they can compare the information on these sites and identify which advisors are more transparent and those that are more inclined to withhold information. You should assume investors who use the Internet to research advisors will feel safer when advisors practice transparency.
Tip #5 Content
Most content on websites is about financial advisors – sometimes it is 100% of the content. The best websites will deliver features of their firms and business practices in ways that benefit investors. For example, your firm is a financial fiduciary (feature). How does this benefit the investors who use your services? Investors respond better to benefits than features.
Tip #6 Differentiation
If every financial advisor website delivers the same information, it will be very difficult for visitors to select the firms they want to interview. Therefore, it is imperative that websites provide differentiating information that helps them stand-out from their competition. The differentiating features should be expressed in a way that benefits investors. In fact, benefits can be differentiating characteristics.
Tip #7 Intuitive
There is nothing worse than a financial advisor website that uses a lot of financial jargon to describe their services and business practices. We assume advisors use jargon because they believe it makes them look more sophisticated and credible. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Confused investors will exit these sites and never return. Why would an investor contact a financial advisor that confuses them? They want advisors they can connect with and that starts with clear communication when they are screening and selecting advisors.
Tip # 8 Relevance
Financial advisor websites have a one-time opportunity to connect with visitors. The more relevant a website’s content and graphics, the higher the probability connections will be made with website visitors. For example, if an ideal type of client is a pre-retiree then a well-designed website will have content and graphics that have some relevance to pre-retirees. In fact, everything on the site should have some connection to a financial advisor’s ideal types of clients.
