What do the majority of financial advisors have in common? When asked, what is the biggest challenge their firms face each month, 82% of them said they did not have enough quality leads to talk to. And they said the problem was getting worse due to the obsolescence of their traditional outbound marketing tactics.
For example, an increasing number of investors are using Caller ID and spam filters to avoid financial advisors who contact them. It turns out most investors want to control who they talk to when they are seeking financial advisors.
This is a difficult marketing challenge. Reaching investors on the Internet is the most complex market on the Internet. That’s because most investors are very cautious when their money is involved.
They have a legitimate concern if they or someone they know had bad experiences with the financial service industry in the past. This creates a unique marketing challenge for financial advisors.
What should every financial advisor know about digital marketing before they start spending money?
Digital marketing for financial advisors is a marathon and not a sprint. It takes an investment of money and time to build the Internet visibility that financial advisors need to produce traffic for their websites.
How much time does it take to start seeing digital marketing results? There are two major variables that impact this answer. First, what is your current level of visibility? It is going to take longer if your current URL visibility is low or non-existent.
Or, if advisors are located in major markets with a lot of competition it is going to take more time to achieve page one rankings for keywords that drive the right types of traffic to financial advisor websites.
The longer financial advisors wait to implement a digital marketing strategy the more time and money it is going to take to be successful. There are only so many organic slots on page one of Google and they are already occupied by other financial advisors. It will take some time to displace them.
Is there a cheap way to achieve digital marketing success? The answer may depend on your definition of cheap, but the answer is probably no. Sure, you can rent a template-based website and download content from a third-party library, but that is a complete waste of money if you want your digital marketing efforts to produce leads. You will need a custom, lead generation website, plenty of original content for your blog, pillar pages, and a significant commitment to social media and local SEO.
What are investors seeking when they visit financial advisor websites?
The answer depends on what investors are looking for. The ideal investor is seeking a financial advisor so the website has to convince the investors they have come to the right place.
The single biggest challenge is delivering the right information to visitors when each visitor could be seeking different information. You can’t predict what they want to see, so it pays to rely on best practices for the delivery of information. You can obtain this from a digital marketing agency that specializes in working with firms in the financial industry.
Expertise and trustworthiness are two of the most important characteristics that investors are looking for when they visit financial advisor websites.
Investors also want a safe experience so they know their information is being protected.
What should financial advisors know about the design of their websites?
Financial advisor websites have four core purposes and all of them are equally dependent on each other:
- Create a positive first impression in seconds so visitors stay on their websites for at least three minutes.
- Deliver the information that investors are seeking in an intuitive, easy-to-understand format.
- Be competitive with the other financial advisor websites that investors are visiting.
- Convert more visitors into qualified leads and contacts.
Why is converting website traffic to high-quality leads for financial advisors so difficult?
As the saying goes: “It’s Complicated”.
Very few investors know how to determine the quality of financial advisors. Therefore, it is difficult to determine what they are looking for without talking to them.
If selecting the best financial advisor is complicated it is even more difficult to compare financial advisors to each other and select the best ones for interviews.
The net result is a more subjective process that varies by the investor. This is one of the main reasons financial advisors are adding more videos to their websites.
How can you convert more website visitors into high-quality leads for financial advisors?
You have to give visitors multiple reasons to contact you.
The most frequently used strategy is to make sure advisors represent what investors are looking for:
- You provide the services they are seeking
- You work with investors like them
- You appear to be legitimate experts
- You are credible
- You describe trust on your website
- Your website addresses their concerns
A second strategy is to provide multiple reasons for contacting you. For example, there is a free offer for an eBook that describes a solution for a frequent financial pain point.
What is the best strategy for creating website pages that convert more visitors into qualified leads?
Actually, there are three strategies that really matter. One strategy is delivering the basic information that investors are seeking to make it easy for them to compare financial advisors to each other:
- About Us
- What You Do
- Who You Serve
- Why Select Your Firm
The second is to practice full disclosure that is based on your firm’s comfort level. For example, one firm provides all of the relevant information that investors are seeking and another firm withholds some of the same information. Case in point, very few financial advisors disclose their AUM or fee schedules on their websites unless the AUM is a big number and fee schedules represent a potential competitive advantage. This creates significant differences that are noticed by investors.
Third, financial advisor websites have to be competitive with the other sites that are visited by investors. If the sites are not competitive, then investors will initiate contact with the other sites that they like better.
Why is navigation such an important feature for producing leads on financial advisor websites?
Our surveys show investors, on their first visits, are going to spend two to three minutes on financial advisor websites. They will not spend additional time searching for information on advisor sites. Therefore, navigation has to be intuitive and give them quick, easy access to the information they are seeking.
How do financial advisors prove they are trustworthy experts on their websites?
Everyone knows trust is an important characteristic when advisor services impact the financial security of their clients. But, how do financial advisors “prove” they are trustworthy. There is one frequently used tactic and one newer tactic.
The frequently used tactic is financial advisors using their fiduciary status to represent themselves as trustworthy on the basis this is the highest ethical standard in the financial service industry. Advisors have to be prepared to educate investors about the importance of this characteristic.
The more recent tactic is the use of testimonials, ratings, and reviews that are displayed on their websites and on the rating websites. Most financial advisors are being cautious when they use this tactic for compliance and industry regulations reasons.
