If you have been thinking about digital marketing, but haven’t done anything about it, you may be running out of time. The longer you wait the tougher it will be to obtain the page ranks you need to produce the right types of traffic for your financial advisor website.
Your competition is not standing still. They are doing what it takes to build online brand awareness and produce traffic for their websites. Your goal is to divert that traffic to your website as long as the traffic is your ideal type of client.
Why Digital Marketing?
Because that is how increasing numbers of investors will find and research financial advisors in 2022 and beyond. Why the big increases? Because more people are using the Internet to “find” what they are looking for. In this case, a financial advisor who provides planning and investment services.
Then they use the Internet to research what they find. Do you specialize in working with investors like them? Do you have credentials (degrees, experience, certifications) that establish you as an expert in your field?
Do you provide advice and services they can trust? Do you provide the services they are seeking? All of this information should reside on your website, be accessible with intuitive navigation, as well as use the best practices Google has set forth with their EAT and YMYL standards.
It does not matter how investors find you: online, friend, or their CPA. 82% of the time they will visit your website, and 64% of the time they will Google search your name. Why? It fits how they make decisions, whether they are buying a car or selecting a financial advisor.
When starting a search for a financial advisor, many investors will:
- Find the alternatives.
- Use research to narrow their choices.
- Reach out to the advisors they want to interview to schedule appointments.
This process benefits investors and higher-quality advisors who meet their expectations.
Their search starts on the Internet where investors find financial advisors. It ends when they interview advisors and make their selection decisions.
The better the fit, between buyer and seller, the higher the probability buyers will give up their anonymity and contact financial advisors for interviews.
What Digital Marketing Strategy?
Think of digital marketing as the top half of your financial advisor sales funnel. Investors are going to find you on the Internet, visit your website, and contact you if they like what they see.
This sounds easy enough, but it is not due to the extraordinary amount of competition that exists on the Internet. There are thousands of financial advisors in every major city in America. They provide similar services for similar fees with similar features and benefits. At least one thousand new RIAs start up every year.
You need a sophisticated strategy that is executed by a team of specialized digital marketing experts to be successful.
When you are successful, you will find your website is an exceptional source of high-quality leads for your firm. That is because investors took time to find you, then they spent time learning more about you before they made the decision to give up their anonymity and initiate contact.
The bottom half of your sales funnel is your sales process. What do say in the first, second, and third interviews that convinces investors to hire your firm and not your competitors. Digital marketing creates opportunities. Your sales acumen completes the process.
Five-Step Funnel
Digital marketing is a five-step sales funnel.
- Step one is the development of a digital marketing sales strategy that is based on your ideal type of client. They could be millennials or baby boomers. The more you target your marketing, the higher the probability you will be successful.
- Step two is building brand awareness and visibility on the Internet. They can’t contact you if they can’t find you. This means page one ranks for keywords that are used by your ideal clients when they search the Internet for financial advisors they can interview.
- Step three in your digital marketing funnel is getting investors from the Internet to your website. This means what they see on the Internet is compelling enough that they click on it. These visitors find what they are looking for (i.e.read a blog article) and learn more by visiting your website.
- Step four, this part of the funnel is to learn more about your firm. This could be the firm itself or the professionals who work there. Usually, it is both. The focus of the information should be information about your firm that benefits investors who become clients of the firm. For example, you are a financial fiduciary that is required to put your clients’ needs before your own. The benefit to clients is you are more trustworthy.
- Step five is convincing these visitors to your website to give up their anonymity and submit their contact information that you will use to schedule an appointment for the initial interview.
Digital marketing does not stop there if investors continue to learn more about you or confirm the information that you are providing them. For example, they check your compliance record at FINRA. Or, they Google search your name to determine if there is any other information on the Internet that would influence their next steps.
Dominate Your Market
Let’s assume your primary market is the metropolitan area where your office is located. After all, that is the way the Internet is designed to work when it matches local buyers and sellers.
However, you may not want to reach just any potential lead if your firm is structured to provide services to particular niches, and the more specific the better. For example, your target market is not just pre-retirees. It is pre-retirees (baby boomers) who are business owners, who are in the process of selling their companies and retiring.
Your digital marketing goal is relatively simple. You want to dominate the keywords these business owners use when they search the Internet for financial advisors who can help them make the right financial decisions. And, you want page one rankings for these keywords. Why page one? 91.5% of Google users do not scroll to page two.
They have so many choices on page one that they don’t have to. According to Google only 4.8% scroll to page two, and 1.1% scroll to page three. Google should attempt to do something about that. More choices are a positive for most investors.
Once you know the keywords, it is a matter of doing the work to achieve the necessary page ranks which determines your online visibility. Your goal is high page ranks for hundreds or thousands of keywords. In the aggregate, this is your primary source of traffic for your website.
Measure Your Results
A key characteristic of digital marketing is your results are measurable. There is data for every facet of the process that you can use to monitor your results. If you have an effective strategy you will be able to track month-to-month improvements in visibility for relevant keywords, the traffic to your website, and your website’s conversion rates.
A highly recommended second tracking system would be what happens in the bottom half of your sales funnel. The results are Yes (they hire you), No (they hire a competitor), or a deferral (check back in a few months). Even deferrals are impacted by digital marketing when they are added to your drip list.
This data will also help you fine-tune your digital marketing and sales processes. Ideally, they are working together so you maximize your conversion rates.
