The vast majority of financial advisory firms have sales funnels in place. However, many of these sales funnels are outdated and ineffective. If your financial advisory firm’s sales funnel does not include the use of digital marketing, it is time to use this advanced type of marketing to improve your results. Even if your firm’s sales funnel already incorporates some digital marketing tools, there is a good chance your sales will improve if you take full advantage of the many opportunities provided by advancements in digital marketing.
Inbound marketing (aka digital marketing) is a rapidly evolving industry that is dynamic rather than static, meaning it is constantly evolving to improve your results. Fine-tune your financial advisor marketing by incorporating the latest digital marketing tools and strategies in your sales funnel and watch your number of prospects and clients expand.
The Basics of Sales Funnels
The primary goal of sales funnels is to steer prospective clients toward the top of the funnel in a metaphorical sense then guide them toward the bottom. However, moving target prospects from the top of the funnel to the bottom is easier said than done. You have a lot of competition and we don’t know how sophisticated their marketing might be. Even if you succeed in generating interest from potential clients, you still have the challenge of moving them from the prospect stage to the revenue-producing client stage.
Only a certain percentage of the prospects that enter the top of the funnel make it to the bottom. Some advisors call this their close ratio. Furthermore, satisfying clients to the point that they advocate on behalf of your financial advisory firm after the point of conversion is even more challenging for most advisors. In fact, many advisors are reluctant to ask for referrals.
The best sales funnels pinpoint important milestones in the client’s journey that prove essential in converting interested prospects into revenue-producing clients. However, even if you succeed in measuring the client’s journey with milestones and proactively guide them toward the sales funnel bottom (the close), your sales success won’t reach its true potential until you carefully fine-tune the sales funnel with digital marketing tools.
Create Content That Generates Interest in Your Financial Advisor Firm
Your sales funnel will stand a much better chance of succeeding if it is primed with the use of exceptional online content. Instead of relying on comparably broad outbound marketing methods that connect your financial advisory firm to as many potential clients as possible, it is better to narrow your scope to those most inclined to benefit from your firm’s advice and services.
Online content builds a bridge between your firm and these high-value prospects. However, simply adding the occasional post to your blog and updating your firm’s status on social media platforms every now and then won’t be sufficient.
Every single component of your financial advisory firm’s online footprint should contain local identifiers, keywords, and key phrases that your target audience is most likely to search for. Weave these key components of search engine optimization (SEO) into your online content and you will make it that much easier for those searching for local financial advisors to find your firm’s blog and website as well as social media, and other components of your online footprint.
As long as your content is not oversaturated with keywords and local identifiers, it will rank well for those terms on the Google search engine results pages (SERPs).
In general, the ideal keyword saturation rate is between 1% and 3%. Every component of your financial advisory firm’s online footprint from your blog to guest blog posts added to other blogs, your homepage, service pages, and even your social media posts should be crafted with SEO squarely in mind. The entirety of this content must contain keywords, key phrases, and local identifiers at the keyword saturation rate that is described above.
Seize the Opportunity to Facilitate the Shift to the “Consideration” Stage
Making it easy for high-quality prospects to find your online footprint is only one component of the modern-day digital sales funnel. Once you have the target audience’s attention, there is an opportunity to increase their interest to the point that they seriously consider your services and contact you to schedule an initial consultation. The consideration stage is particularly important as this is the point in time when prospective clients contemplate whether you fall into the best-in-class category for financial advisors that they are seeking.
FYI, that is the investors’ biggest dilemma. When they are searching for financial advisors they must screen them to determine who they want to interview. And, since most do not know how to determine quality, this becomes a subjective process, which opens the door to several digital marketing strategies.
If you can convince leads to sign up for your financial advisory firm’s email list or read through other components of your firm’s online footprint, you stand a good chance of converting them into active prospects and they will become revenue-producing clients when you convince them you are their best choice for financial advice and services.
The challenge lies in interacting with your prospects once they enter the top of the digital sales funnel. This is a golden opportunity to educate prospects about the value of your services, ultimately converting leads into prospects and prospects into revenue-producing clients. For example, email marketing is that much more effective when prospects value the communications. If there is no meaningful value they will unsubscribe from your drip list. This is a major challenge for many financial advisors who distribute stale, generic newsletters to investors on their drip lists.
Retargeting can also be productive. This form of web-based advertising displays ads to those who visited your financial advisor website in the past. Efficient retargeting keeps your firm at the forefront of the online visitors’ minds, greatly increasing the chances that they will reconsider your firm and move through the sales funnel, ultimately culminating in higher conversion rates.
Allow Your Digital Sales Funnel to Evolve Over Time
Your financial advisory firm’s digital sales funnel will not be completely perfect right out of the gate. It is best to think of this sales funnel as a work in progress that gradually produces better results over time. Continue to perfect your financial advisory firm’s sales funnel as though it is a painting that improves with each stroke of the brush and your sales results will produce the results you are seeking.
After all, digital marketing tools are constantly improving, presenting new and important opportunities to connect with new leads and prospects and guide them through your sales funnel with the end goal of converting them into clients who remain loyal to your financial advisor firm.
If everything goes as planned, your satisfied clients will advocate on your behalf when interacting with others, steering that many more leads toward your financial advisory firm. Continue to test different approaches to gauge their impact on your sales success and fine-tune them as necessary. Be patient, give your continuously expanding digital sales funnel a chance to move investors through the various stages of converting visitors on your website into leads, and leads into active prospects, and prospects into revenue-producing clients.
