Consider the following background information that describes a major marketing challenge that impacts more than 80% of independent financial advisors when they market their services on the Internet:
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100% of financial advisors have websites
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82% say their websites do not produce reliable results
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93% say their websites need more traffic
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Website conversion rates are low (the industry average is 2-4%)
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Engagements are appointments or requests for information
What is the solution for this financial advisor marketing challenge?
In today’s digital world, connecting with potential clients requires more than just a website—you already know this doesn’t work most of the time for most financial advisors.
Following are five digital marketing business practices. You determine how they may apply to your firm. Our financial advisor website:
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Delivers the right marketing information to visitors
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Provides all of the information that investors are seeking
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Omits information that may disclose a weakness
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Does not produce the level of trust that investors are seeking
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Is not a reliable source of leads
What causes investors to exit financial advisor websites without contacting them? It may be a lack of trust based on the information that is or is not displayed on these websites.
How do lead generation companies produce leads on the Internet?
Several lead generation companies use the Internet to produce leads they sell to financial advisors. Their primary marketing tactic is SEM (Search Engine Marketing), a paid advertising campaign supplemented with SEO (Search Engine Optimization). In other words, the Internet is their primary source of leads.
Following are the top five features of their marketing pitches:
- Experts have vetted the advisors
- Advisors have comprehensive online profiles
- They will receive three choices
- They use data-driven algorithms to complete matches
- Initial consultations are complimentary
Their online marketing is another example of selective transparency that impacts investors. They may not disclose details that could lead to potential conflicts of interest, such as what advisors pay for leads or their relationships with enterprise clients.
Get the right financial advisor marketing plan! Connect with Paladin Digital Marketing today!
Paladin: What if a free offer on your website increased your credibility and trustworthiness and produced leads at the same time?
Building online credibility and trust has never been more important than today, when individual investors have almost unlimited access to financial advisors on the Internet. This creates a major marketing opportunity for digitally savvy financial advisors. However, due to the sheer volume of online competitors, the opportunity also is a major marketing challenge.
Our goal in this article is to introduce a different type of free offer that should be part of the digital marketing strategies for higher-level financial advisors comfortable practicing online transparency.
How can you help investors and your firm at the same time?
As a digitally savvy financial advisor, you already know online transparency is one of the best ways to stand out online. But how do you make transparency a marketing tool that generates leads for your firm?
Thinking outside the box that describes your current marketing tactics, what if there was a way to create credibility and trust, generate leads for your services, and gain competitive advantage all at once? This marketing tool already exists, and institutional investors have used it for decades.
We recommend publishing a free offer on your website based on an institutional-quality Business Profile modified for retail investors.
Why do we think the Paladin Business Profile (PBP) will add value to the retail investors’ search for financial advisors? We know institutional investors with millions or billions of dollars already rely on RFPs to gather information from multiple money managers. If an RFP works for them, why wouldn’t a PBP work for retail investors, particularly those with larger asset amounts?
Paladin: This article will describe how this marketing tactic works for retail investors and independent financial advisors.
What is an institutional RFP?
Suppose you already work with larger businesses and institutions. In that case, you know how they rely on RFPs to gather the same information from multiple financial consultants, advisors, money managers, and third-party administrators.
Institutional investors, with millions or billions of dollars at stake, have long understood the importance of conducting objective, in-depth due diligence when they select financial experts to help them invest their assets. You might even say they have a fiduciary duty to get the highest level of service for the lowest possible fee.
Paladin: Institutions seek factual information from multiple providers to help them make the right selection decisions. They also expect full transparency based on the information requested in their RFPs.
The role of the RFP is to streamline this data-gathering process by allowing institutions to collect the same information from multiple financial firms. This makes comparisons easier and ensures all potential advisors are evaluated based on the same criteria.
In addition, for institutional investors, the primary benefits of using an RFP include:
- When every financial advisor responds to the same RFP questions, the institutions control the types of information they rely on to select financial advisors.
- It’s easier to compare apples to apples, ensuring that important factors like credentials, experience, and pricing are all weighed equally.
- Institutions can review multiple proposals without wasting time interviewing advisors who may not be a good fit. The RFP filters out lower-quality advisors early in their selection processes.
- An RFP helps institutions make more informed decisions by ensuring they have all the data needed to conduct objective financial advisor evaluations.
- The RFP reduces the risk of selecting the financial advisor with the best personality or sales skills.
Paladin: The structured nature of a professional profile enables investors to focus on factual responses that are guaranteed to be accurate by the signatures of financial advisors.
What selection problems are solved by this free PBP offer for retail investors?
There are five major problems or risks that are addressed by this one unique type of free offer on financial advisor websites:
- The various types of information on financial advisor websites can confuse investors. For example, some financial advisors are fiduciaries, and some are not. Some are compensated with fees, and some are not. Some are CFP®s, and some are not.
- Many investors need to learn the right questions to ask when evaluating the qualifications of multiple financial advisors.
- Investors have difficulty obtaining the same information from multiple financial advisors, making their selection decisions more risky.
- The typical investor doesn’t know good answers from bad ones.
- The ultimate risk occurs if they select the wrong financial advisors for the wrong reasons. It can cost them thousands or millions of dollars.
This online investor risk increases with the various transparency levels many financial advisors practice on their websites. Even the best financial advisors often fail to provide complete online transparency because their websites are viewed as online sales brochures.
Some advisors practice more transparency than others. The more information that is withheld, the greater the hidden risks for investors.
Paladin Tip: If the best free offers solve big problems, then a free Paladin Business Profile helps them solve their biggest financial challenge. That is selecting the right advisor for their needs and circumstances.
Is a Paladin Business Profile a one-size-fits-all solution?
A free PBP offer can benefit any financial firm willing to practice increased transparency that benefits investors. However, two potential strategies can be used: one designed for smaller, newer firms with one or a few professionals and the other for larger, more established firms. Each one has unique features and benefits that will help investors make better selection decisions.
Does the profile work equally well for professionals and firms?
Sometimes, firms and professionals are one and the same. One profile covers both.
In other cases, larger firms employ multiple professionals, so a firm profile and a professional profile may be needed.
Firms and professionals are free to choose the format that works best for them.
Does the PBP work equally well for larger and smaller financial advisor firms?
Yes. In both cases, these firms serve the same types of clients and provide many of the same services. However, a key difference can be the minimum asset requirements of the firm.
For example, smaller firms may have minimums of $100,000 to $500,000. Larger firms may have minimums in the $1 million to $5 million range.
How does a Paladin Business Profile generate a competitive advantage?
One of the biggest challenges for individual investors is knowing what they don’t know. The PBP will fix that when it requests the information investors need to make the right decisions when selecting financial advisors.
The Paladin Business Profile will be used primarily by financial advisors with higher-quality credentials, ethics, and business practices.
When you provide a free PBP service to individual investors, the primary beneficiaries will be investors seeking a more efficient and safer process for selecting financial advisors.
They are your ideal type of visitor because there is a good chance anyone downloading the free PBP service is actively seeking a financial advisor to help them manage their assets.
Investors with larger asset amounts may be more inclined to take advantage of this free offer because they have more to lose if they select the wrong financial advisor.
You can see how this service benefits you and your clients. You provide investors with a PBP template that helps them gather the same information from multiple firms. This makes the investors’ screening and data-gathering processes easier, safer, and faster.
Meanwhile, this helps you build credibility and trust by providing a free service that solves a retail investor’s biggest problem and exposure to unnecessary risk. Of course, the source of the free PBP template builds immediate credibility and trust.
Whether you're fee-only, a fiduciary, or emphasize another unique aspect of your financial advisor firm, the PBP helps investors decide when they are selecting financial advisors.
Most importantly, providing an PBP template signals investors that you are a trustworthy firm that has nothing to hide.
How does a Paladin Business Profile work for individual investors?
If a financial advisor’s website contains primarily “marketing” information designed to make the firm more competitive online, its a Paladin Business Profile that contains the additional information that helps investors select the right advisors.
Unlike the marketing information on financial advisor websites, which varies, a PBP for investors requests the same information from multiple advisors. It is a standardized request for deeper insights that requires documented responses and a signature by the advisor attesting to the accuracy of the information.
The profile format encourages financial advisors to present their backgrounds in a way that is easy for investors to understand and compare to other advisors.
What happens if an advisor refuses to provide the information that is requested in the PBP? They automatically exclude themselves from the selection process.
Are there two types of profiles?
Yes, one type of PBP is designed to gather information from firms. The other is designed to gather information from professionals who work for the firms. In some cases the firm and the professional is one and the same, in which we suggest profiling the firm.
Paladin: Website visitors can download your firm’s profile, obtain a free copy of the template to use with other firms, and a Guide that describes how to interpret the information in the Profile.
A typical Profile may request a variety of information that includes:
- Credentials and qualifications
- Licensing and registrations
- Ethics and compliance
- Fiduciary standards
- Types of services
- Custodian(s)
- Ideal types of clients
- Specializations
- Compensation method(s)
- Service profiles: Planning, investment management, risk, tax
- Affiliations with other professionals
This level of detail goes far beyond what's typically available on a financial advisor's website and gives retail investors the information they need to make the right decisions. The Profile also excludes all of the sales messaging.
How will compliance departments respond to the Profiles?
We suspect some compliance departments will restrict the use of the Profile, because it will make some of their advisors appear to be weak. In particular, this will be true for a compliance team that is tasked with protecting their firms’ commission revenue streams.
There are two relatively simple solutions:
- Restrict the use of the Profile by its advisors.
- Request changes to the profile to remove offensive language
How does a Paladin Business Profile benefit investors?
While institutions have been using Business Profiles for decades (they call them RFPs), the benefits of this data-gathering service extend to retail investors as well, in particular those investors with significant asset amounts and complex planning requirements because they have more to lose.
By providing a Paladin Business Profile, financial advisors can help retail investors overcome the following challenges:
- Asking the right questions: Many investors don’t know where to start when interviewing financial advisors. A Profile template gives them a roadmap, ensuring they ask the most important questions to help them make informed decisions.
- Documented responses: Unlike verbal sales pitches, which can be challenging to remember when interviewing multiple advisors, the Profile provides written responses. This ensures investors receive clear, concise, documented information to refer to later.
- Documentation matters if there is a future dispute.
- Screening out low-quality advisors: With a Profile, investors can quickly eliminate advisors who don’t meet their primary requirements. Whether it’s an unsatisfactory answer or a red flag in compliance records, the Profile enables investors to weed out lower-quality options before scheduling any interviews.
- Investors are less susceptible to advisor personalities, sales skills and tactics.
- Comparing advisors is easy: Standardized responses from multiple advisors allow investors to compare advisor responses more easily,
- The PBP reduces subjectivity and increases objectivity when they vet and select financial advisors.
- Better selection decisions: Ultimately, the Paladin Business Profile allows retail investors to make better decisions by ensuring they have all the information needed to evaluate each financial advisor more thoroughly.
By providing retail investors with a PBP and supporting documents, you’re offering them valuable guidance and positioning yourself as an advisor who believes in full transparency and has nothing to hide. This approach helps you stand out from other advisors who may rely solely on flashy marketing, generalized content, and undocumented verbal information.
Paladin: Prudent investors do not select financial advisors based on messaging and undocumented sales pitches.
How does a Paladin Business Profile benefit financial advisors?
While a PBP provides numerous advantages to investors, it can also create significant benefits for financial advisors willing to provide investors with this higher level of voluntary transparency.
The financial service industry can be confusing for investors. We think Wall Street firms may like it that way. A confused investor is a vulnerable investor. There are numerous differences they simply do not understand. Consequently, they are prone to making bad decisions when they select financial advisors.
Paladin is providing a service that benefits financial advisors and investors.
Here’s how the Profile can work in your favor as a financial advisor:
- Only one advisor will provide a free Profile marketing service.
- Right away you stand out by providing a higher level of service.
- The Profile has the potential to create:
- Credibility
- Trust
- Competitive advantage
- Leads
- By providing a completed Profile, you show confidence in your services and are open to scrutiny.
- This openness also builds trust and credibility with potential clients from the outset.
- What does it say to investors when a financial advisor refuses to complete a Profile. A Paladin Profile tool addresses this issue.
- A completed Profile positions you as a professional who adds immediate value.
- Providing a Profile template helps investors get the information they need to make better decisions.
- This service positions you as a helpful and knowledgeable. professional rather than just another advisor looking for assets.
- You stand out as a trustworthy advisor with nothing to hide.
- This gives you a competitive edge over other advisors who may be reluctant to provide this level of transparency.
- If advisors refuse to complete the RFP, they automatically exclude themselves from the selection process.
- Generates more meaningful engagements: The PBP can be a powerful lead generation tool.
- Investors have to register to use the tool.
- Paladin Profiles can be used with retail and institutional clients.
Paladin Tip: Incorporating PBP templates into your marketing strategy helps you attract more informed and serious clients and differentiates you from other financial advisors who may be hesitant to embrace this level of transparency.
About Paladin Business Profiles?
A third party profile may be viewed as more objective than one that is produced by a financial advisor.
There is always the possibility an advisor driven profile will omit certain information that is not favorable for that advisor.
Paladin has years of experience gathering and vetting the qualifications of financial advisors.
Paladin clients are financial advisors. Current services are limited to digital marketing.
Paladin developed this client engagement tool to increase the lead flow on its clients websites.
Paladin does not have any contact with investors.
Do you have to be a Paladin client to use this service?
Next Steps: How does Paladin support this free offer for Advantage clients?
In today’s rapidly evolving digital world, investors want access to information that helps them make important buying decisions. What is more important than information they can trust that will help them select the right financial advisor or the best financial advisor.
Paladin: The right decision could be worth thousands or millions of dollars.
A profile service is an ideal way to demonstrate your commitment to transparency and describe your abilities as a financial advisor. It’s a clear signal that you are an advisor with nothing to hide.
Paladin provides three types of profile services:
- A eBook that describes the information in the profile (for investors)
- An eBook that describes how to market the service to investors
- An article that describes financial advisors who do not provide profiles
- A completed profile for your firm
- A blank profile for use by investors
- A dictionary
Financial advisors can Request a Guide from Paladin that describes this strategy in more detail, including a sample PBP.
All Paladin communications are limited to financial advisors. Paladin does not have any direct contact with investors.
This is a free service that benefits investors and financial advisors.
The service is limited to advisors who use Paladin’s digital marketing services.
We are testing the service to see if it generates leads.
By making it easier for investors to ask the right questions, compare advisors to each other, and make better decisions, you are also helping them build a stronger, more trusting relationship with your firm.
Paladin: By learning from institutional investors, you can provide a solution for the biggest investor challenge: selecting the right financial advisor for the right reasons.
Want more information:
Visit: PaladinDigitalMarketing.com
Email: Info@PaladinDigitalMarketing.com
Contact: Jack Waymire (Jack@PaladinDigitalMarketing.com)
