Why market your financial advisor services online? Simply put, that is where many investors go to find, research, and initiate contact with potential advisors. According to a major search engine service provider, this number is already approaching more than two million users per year.
This makes a lot of sense. It is easy to find financial advisors online. It is also easy to learn more about them. Furthermore, investors can remain anonymous until they can schedule introductory interviews.
So how do advisors maximize their marketing results when focusing their marketing strategy online? After all, this online marketing strategy is intensely competitive. There are no shortcuts. You have to do everything right to be successful. You need the consistent application of a well-thought-out digital marketing strategy to produce the best results.
What are the ten marketing tips for financial advisors?
- Establish yourself as an online financial expert.
- Market yourself as a specialist.
- Investors want choices that benefit them.
- Create positive experiences for investors online.
- Develop a competitive website that produces leads.
- Use affiliates to broaden your service offerings.
- Use email marketing to communicate with your drip list.
- Use fintech to track your online results.
- Establish yourself as a financial expert.
- Hire a marketing agency that does the heavy lifting for you.
Let’s get started.
Establish your advisory firm as an online financial expert
It would help if you assumed investors would visit your website and Google search your name to learn more about your firm. This is your one-time opportunity to establish your firm as an expert on various financial topics.
How do you make your firm an expert that investors can trust?
- Develop a Resource Center on your website
- Provide an array of free eBooks
- Produce an educational series of videos
- Write blog articles and pillar pages
- Provide a library of short videos
Your marketing strategy should minimize promotional sales tactics that erode credibility and trust.
Market your financial advisor as a specialist
Most financial advisors will work with just about any individual investor that meets their minimum asset requirement. This may be considered good for the advisor and bad for investors.
Why is this bad for investors? Because over 80% prefer specialized advisors that work with clients like themselves. For example, if a client is about to retire and roll 401(k) assets into an IRA. They prefer to work with a pre-retirement specialist that can help them make the right decisions. They believe the advisor’s specialized knowledge will benefit them.
Specialists can win more new clients, which more than offsets any prospective clients they may lose outside their specializations.
Marketing your financial advisor as a specialist is a major differentiating characteristic.
Investors want choices that benefit them
As the old saying goes, investors buy benefits and not features. For example, your firm is a financial fiduciary, a potentially important feature. But how does that benefit investors? Most advisors market it as a trust issue.
More than others, some investors know they have choices when selecting financial advisors. So financial advisor marketing should emphasize the choices and explain how the different choices benefit investors.
There is another subtle impact when advisors market choices to investors. They come across as less salesy. They are helping their prospective clients make the right choices versus trying to sell them a particular product or service.
Create positive experiences for investors online
Building a presence is more than just becoming more visible. Visibility is important because it produces traffic for financial advisor websites. But a viable presence also includes credibility and trust.
Think of the web as a one-time opportunity to create a great first impression. The first impression will impact whether or not the investors will give up their anonymity and submit their contact information.
This is the last step in financial advisors’ lead generation sales funnel. This inbound marketing process requires investors to initiate contact with prospective advisors. Investors must have a positive experience to take the all-important next step when a name becomes an active prospect.
Develop a competitive website that produces leads
You can spend time and money on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing; paid advertising campaigns), but your website is responsible for converting visitors into qualified leads.
This means your website has to deliver the information that investors are seeking:
- Who are you?
- Who do you serve?
- Do you provide the services they are seeking?
- Why should they contact you?
Of equal importance, your website has to be competitive with the other websites that the investors are visiting. This could be six or eight financial advisor websites, and they only contact the three they like the best - another example of a choice.
When do you know this vital marketing strategy is failing your firm? When you have online visibility and website traffic but no leads. For some reason, the website is not resonating with investors. There are other websites they like better.
Use affiliates to broaden your service offerings
A high percentage of financial advisors use a marketing strategy that is based on networking. They generally want to network with CPAs and estate planning attorneys who do not compete with their economic interests. They are seeking referrals from these professionals.
Another strategy can produce leads - our clients call it the affiliate marketing strategy. CPAs and attorneys are just part of the strategy. Financial advisors expand this strategy to include other types of professionals that provide specialized services to their ideal types of clients but do not compete with the economic interests of the advisor:
- Social Security specialists
- Medicare specialists
- Business appraisers and brokers
- Longevity experts for retirees (100+)
- Grief counselors for recent widows, widowers, divorcees
- Real estate and relocation professionals
- Charitable tax planning expert
Use email marketing to communicate with your drip list
Let’s assume you have developed a drip list of potential prospects that you communicate with on a monthly basis.
These are leads because you have their contact information. But they are not prospects for three reasons:
- They may be seeking financial information versus financial advisors
- They are not ready to begin the interview process
- There has been no contact that established a mutual interest
So, they reside on your drip list, and you communicate with them regularly to keep your name in front of them. They think of you when they are ready to start the interview process.
Generic newsletters are easy to communicate with names on your drip list, but they are not your best way. Relevant emails will generate better results when the content concerns the interests of names on drip lists.
Use fintech to track your online results
A robust digital marketing reporting system is important so advisors have the information they need to make the right decisions.
There are three elements of reporting. What is happening:
- Online- visibility, keyword ranks, and traffic
- On the website - converting visitors into leads
- In sales - converting leads into revenue-producing clients
The digital marketing data should be based on goals that are updated monthly or quarterly. Financial advisors should have on-demand access to their marketing data.
Establish yourself as a financial expert
Writing blog articles, pillar pages, and eBooks make you an author. When they appear online, you are a published author. This is one more credential for your biography.
Who writes financial articles? Financial experts write articles based on their specialized knowledge. Once again, this can be added to your resume of accomplishments, and it helps establish you as an expert in your field.
Expertise is one of the top five credentials that investors are looking for when they select advisors. The more they consider an advisor an expert, the greater the competitive advantage.
Hire a marketing agency that does the heavy lifting for you
You can try to keep all marketing activities up in the air at the same time yourself. Or, you can hire a digital marketing agency that does the work for you. Several skill sets comprise a marketing expert team: Writing, editing, social media, local SEO, email marketing, graphics, video, and paid advertising.
It pays to select an agency that specializes in working with firms in the financial service industry. Just like your clients prefer specialists, you should also have this requirement when you select a digital marketing agency that knows how to reach investors.
