Part of a successful financial advisor marketing strategy includes creating and curating quality content for your financial advisor website. You might even say this is a critical strategy for a successful digital marketing campaign. But are you also putting that content to work for you? If not, implementing lead capture forms on your financial advisor website is a great place to start enhancing your content.
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What is a Lead Capture Form?
Simply put, a lead capture form is a simple contact form that requires completion by the user to gain access to your content. Also known as “gating” content, when used correctly, it can generate a steady flow of new leads that can accelerate the growth of your firm.
Decide Which Content is Behind a Lead Capture Form
Most of your website content should be easily accessible on your site without a lead capture form. Think of it as a “sample” of your content that shows visitors the type of quality financial content they can expect from you. Examples of this include blog posts, short explainer videos, and simple infographics. More substantial content like eBooks, guides, whitepapers, complex infographics, long-form videos, seminar recordings, and the like should require a completed lead capture form for access.
A best practice is to first audit all your existing financial advisor content and decide which information should require a lead capture form. You may be surprised to realize that you have been giving away valuable content that could have been used to obtain contact information from visitors on your website.
You may also see some short-form content that could become lead-capture-worthy if it was expanded to include more substantial content. The good news is that whatever you discover about your existing financial advisor website content, you will have a clearer picture of what you need to offer website visitors to obtain their contact information.
Don’t Undervalue Your Financial Advisor Content
It might seem risky to require a lead capture form for your financial advisor content. After all, isn’t the goal of creating and sharing the content to get people to see it? The answer is yes, which can add to your credibility. However, your goal is still the production of leads. Investors seeking information can also be seeking financial advisors who provide the information. Will some visitors decide not to fill out the form? Again, the answer is yes. However, this is where the quality of your content can be a factor.
As a rule, most website visitors will fill out a lead capture form if they feel like the content is valuable - for example, provides a solution for a financial pain point. These forms are nothing new to the typical internet user, and they are more likely to complete the form and provide access to their contact information if they’re a “warmer” prospect who may be shopping for financial information they can trust.
Pro Tip: Once you have a completed lead capture form, it’s up to you to deliver on the promise of high-quality content and follow up with additional relevant information when you reach out in the future with email marketing campaigns and/or sales efforts.
Collect the Right Information
The sky is not the limit when it comes to the information you can ask in a lead capture form. Too many requests can turn off the visitor on your website. A best practice is to think about what information you absolutely need, versus unnecessary information that may cause the investor to exit the site.
From there, the form should be built to strike a balance between need-to-know and want-to-know. Essentially, you should collect enough information to create a contact or add another name to your drip list. But, avoid creating a form that asks for too much personal information.
Not All Forms Are Created Equal
What information you collect should depend on the type of financial advisor content behind the lead capture form itself. For example, if someone is trying to access an eBook on how to start saving for retirement, they may not meet your minimum asset requirements. Compare that to a visitor who is seeking estate planning information. They may be getting close to retirement.
Pro Tip: Should you explain what you will do with their contact information? Give them access to an eBook? Follow-up with a sales call? Add them to a drip list? The answer is yes.
It would be safe to assume that the first visitor is younger with limited assets. The other visitor may have already accumulated substantial wealth, which makes them the ideal prospect. Further, the way you approach each of these potential clients should differ as well. So why would you have both types of leads fill out the same contact form, asking the same questions when they’re clearly different? Answer: you wouldn’t (or at least you shouldn’t).
Be Transparent As Possible
When someone fills out a lead capture form, they are trusting you with their personal information. Consequently, you want them to feel safe. It’s your responsibility to practice transparency for how you will use that information and a credible promise to not share or sell the information to 3rd parties. This will likely need to be run by your compliance officer, but will help manage the concerns of the investors.
Once You’ve Captured the Lead, What Are You Going to Do With It?
Depending on the marketing practices of your financial advisor firm, leads may be contacted immediately to determine what their needs might be. Or, their data is collected and fulfilled electronically. Ultimately, their information will be exported to a particular that is managed by your CMS. From there, you can organize your leads into personalized segments that are based on the information you collected on the lead capture form. These segments can also help develop client personas and help you target each person with the content and information best suited to their interests.
Whatever system you’re using to manage your financial advisory leads, they must have the ability to unsubscribe at any time. If you’re using a dedicated platform, this is often automated by the system when an “unsubscribe” link is clicked in an email. If you don’t have an email marketing platform that manages your database, it can be a bit trickier to manage unsubscribes but is still a necessary feature of your marketing.
Note: For financial advisory firms using old-fashioned email systems like Outlook for instance, the key is to check all email replies and manually remove anyone who wishes to be unsubscribed. If you plan to implement lead capture forms on your financial advisor website, you can expect this process to become more labor-intensive as your drip list increases in size.
About Paladin
Paladin is a team of digital marketing professionals with more than 100 years of collective financial industry experience marketing our clients' services to individuals, institutions, and financial advisors. Paladin is a boutique agency that was founded in 2003 to provide game-changing digital marketing services to a limited number of firms and professionals in the financial service industry. Our services range from designing and developing custom websites to providing SEO, SEM, and Fractional CMO services. Want more information about our digital marketing services? Email your request to Paladin’s CMO: Jack@PaladinDigitalMarketing.com
