Every financial advisor website serves two primary purposes. One is to deliver key information about the firm and the professionals who work there. The other is to convert visitors into qualified leads. Plus, the information that is delivered by financial advisor websites must be competitive with the other sites that are being reviewed by investors.
Read our Top 10 list for digital marketing features to learn more.
First impressions are based on what investors see in the first 10 seconds on financial advisor websites: Names, Logos, Elevator Pitches, and Navigation. All of this information is available on the home page above the fold.
The name and logo have to be professional and memorable. The elevator pitch has to resonate so it keeps investors on financial advisor websites.
The navigation has to be intuitive when it creates the path for learning more about financial advisors. Numerous studies show investors will exit websites before they will search for information on them.
Over 50% of advisors say this is the most visited page on a financial advisor website. It makes sense that investors want to know more about the professionals who will be planning their financial futures and investing their assets.
What happens if you happen to be a boutique firm and very few professionals work there. One strategy is to profile the founder of the firm. Another strategy is to add affiliated professionals with the proper disclosures: CPA, estate planning attorney, insurance specialist.
Another type of content describes your services on individual pages. The most common are investment management, financial planning, tax, and risk management.
You should avoid using terms that confuse the typical investor. Why would an investor select a financial advisor that provides confusing information? It stands to reason that investors will interview the advisors that they feel they understand.
A lot of digital marketing strategy goes into the Who We Serve pages on financial advisor websites. At the core of the strategy is investors’ propensity to select advisors for interviews that work with clients like themselves.
In a simple sense, a Baby Boomer does not select a financial advisor who specializes in working with millennials - and vice versa. They are seeking financial advisors who work with investors like themselves on the basis specialists will produce better results.
A high percentage of financial advisors struggle with this particular content. They have to come up with three to five features that differentiate them from other advisors. And the more valuable the features, the higher the probability they will make a difference when investors select the financial advisors they want to interview.
Examples of differentiating characteristics include: Independence, RIA, fee-only, financial fiduciary, specialization, and open architecture for portfolios.
Every financial advisor website should have a Resource Center that contains information on financial topics. Some advisors refer to the content in Resource Centers as Insights. The most common types of content will include: Blog articles, eBooks, pillar pages, videos, white papers, and on-demand webinars.
This content serves three critical purposes.
One is to add to the credibility of the financial advisors’ firms on the basis they have the expertise to produce the content in the Resource Center.
The second is to make the advisor a trustworthy source of objective financial information that is not promotional.
The third is to produce traffic for financial advisor websites.
Financial advisor websites should give investors a lot of reasons to initiate contact. And, then make it very easy to initiate the contact.
For example, a website has a CTA (Call To Action) on every page. A typical CTA may be tied to some type of free offer (see #8) that rewards investors who initiate contact with something that they put a value on.
There are free offers that produce leads and there are free offers that produce no results or they are few and far between.
What is the difference? The offer has to be good enough that investors will give up their anonymity to get it.
What are examples of productive free offers? How about an eBook that solves a frequent financial pain point. Investors will register to read about a solution. And, the content establishes the source as a trustworthy financial expert.
How about attending an On-Demand webinar that addresses one of the biggest financial fears of many investors. For example, a pre-retiree’s biggest financial fear is running out of money late in life. A webinar that provides answers can be a great source of leads.
Examples of non-productive free offers include free plans and/or portfolio reviews. They require investors to provide financial information to financial advisors they don’t know.
Many financial advisors forget a critical step when they ask investors for their contact information on their websites.
Let’s assume the investors found the financial advisors’ websites on the Internet and have no previous relationship with the firms. Can they trust these firms with their contact information or not?
It pays to provide information that makes these investors feel safe when they submit their information.
For example, there is a statement that says advisors will use the information to fulfill the investors’ requests. The information will not be provided to any other firm or professional.
It is also a good idea to publish a Privacy Policy on financial advisor websites and provide a link to the Policy. Investors may not view the content in the Policy, but the fact that there is one is a source of comfort.
The biggest marketing challenge for any financial advisor website is to provide information that proves financial advisors are competent and trustworthy. And, they have to do this without track records that document the results of current clients.
Fortunately, the SEC has finally recognized the impact of the Internet on the ways investors find and research financial advisors. Therefore, it is now legal to publish testimonials and ratings on financial advisor websites, subject to some fairly rational disclosure requirements.
This creates a new way to prove competence and trustworthiness. At some point, financial advisor websites that do not have testimonials will be conspicuous.
We strongly recommend financial advisors check with compliance before publishing testimonials on their websites.
The Internet has had an extraordinary impact on a variety of industries. It is just beginning to impact the financial service industry.
The Internet will make it easy for investors to find and research financial advisors by visiting their websites and Google searching their names. And, even if investors know financial advisors they will use the Internet to research them.
This means digital marketing will be the future for marketing financial advice and services to investors.