Editor's Note: This post was originally published in September 2016 and has been completely revamped and updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
Wall Street’s sales culture has dominated the way financial services and products have been marketed for decades. The foundation of the culture has been a personable, skilled salesperson who always met face-to-face with prospective clients. This culture worked for a long time because financial advisors controlled all of the information that investors needed to pick the professionals who helped them plan their financial futures and invest their assets.
The Internet is the game changer that makes part of this culture obsolete. And, it is just beginning to impact the way the financial service industry markets its services to individual investors and their families. Wall Street and its legions of advisors no longer control all of the information that investors rely on to select them.
Investors will have increasing access to online knowledge, information, and services that help them select the best advisors and services.
Tech-savvy advisory firms and professionals will make the Internet their primary source of new leads, prospects, and revenue-producing clients. RIAs that begin implementing these top digital marketing trends will be more competitive over time than those firms that choose to sit on the sidelines.
Inbound Marketing is the Future
The single biggest trend that impacts the way financial advisors market their services is Inbound Marketing. Inbound uses a combination of blogging (also known as content marketing), free offers, social media, and email marketing to connect with potential clients who are interested in the content that they are providing on the Internet.
In the past, advisors relied on Outbound Marketing tactics (advisors initiate contact with investors) to win new clients: Telemarketing, direct mail, networking, etc. These invasive sales tactics have been producing diminishing returns for years as increasing numbers of investors use the Internet to find, screen, and contact financial professionals.
This trend makes Inbound Marketing (investors initiate contact with advisors) the strategy of choice as more financial advisors use the Internet to build visibility, credibility, trust, and traffic for their websites.
Financial Advisor Websites
The first place investors visit online is financial advisor websites when they are searching for advice and services. Advisor home pages have 10 seconds to deliver compelling messages that causes investors to want to stay on their websites.
The more time they spend on financial advisor websites the higher the probability they will initiate contact. Then websites have two to three minutes to deliver the information that investors are seeking about:
- The firm (About Us, What We Do, Who We Serve)
- Professionals who work at the firm (Our Founders, Our Team)
- Financial topics (Resource Center, Insights)
Transparency is becoming an increasingly important function on financial advisor websites. More investors know who is withholding information from them on websites.
Investors will initiate contact if you fit what they are looking for.
Blogging Builds Visibility, Credibility, and Trust
Old Outbound Marketing tactics are disruptive by nature. Advisors were contacting people that did not want to be contacted. Consequently, rejection rates approached 100% due to the impact of Call ID and other types of spam filters. This made obsolete Outbound tactics a major waste of time and money.
Imagine if you could produce blog content that did the following:
- Solved financial problems for investors
- Established you as an expert in your field
- Built trust based on publishing consistent, high-quality information
- Increased traffic to your website
- Produced leads for your services
- Added contacts to your drip system
Welcome to blogging - one of the best ways to produce the right types of traffic for your website.
Onsite Videos Have Multiple Applications
The written word is powerful. Video is even more powerful and it is rapidly becoming a dominant way to communicate on the Internet.
Video is a very efficient way to communicate information.
Video can display the personality, culture, and values of your firm.
Video is the next best thing to a face-to-face meeting with a prospective client.
Video can also be produced in a way that is entertaining, which increases the amount of time investors spend on your website.
Mobile Responsive Websites
A mobile-friendly website is an absolute necessity and the need will become more acute over time. Already, 62% of searches are conducted from mobile devices. Plus, Google will penalize the organic ranking of websites if they are not mobile responsive. From a Google perspective, websites that are not mobile friendly are not mobile friendly.
There is a second aspect of mobile friendly. It is voice friendly. When investors use mobile devices they are inclined to use voice commands to initiate searches. This creates longer strings of keywords because they tend to talk in sentences.
Building Online Credibility
Anyone can publish content on the Internet. You do not have to be a brand-name author to develop a following.
You can use content to establish you and your firm as financial experts. This could include blog articles, eBooks, pillar pages, checklists, social media posts, and other types of content.
This can be a critical element when investors Google search your name to learn more about you. Ideally, they will see large amounts of published content with your name on it.
Lastly, the content targets your ideal types of clients. Not only are you a subject matter expert, you also have a substantial amount of experience working with baby boomers who are about to retire.
Niche Marketing Works Best
Investors are suspicious when advisors represent themselves as experts in planning, investment, insurance, tax and legal. Plus, they are experts on the financial needs and concerns of millennials, X/Y’s, boomers, and their parents.
Your validity is enhanced when you market yourself as a specialist. You have a lot of knowledge in a niche market. Figure out who your ideal client(s) are and focus your website and blog content on this target audience.
Numerous surveys show investors prefer financial advisors who work with people like themselves. Therefore, a baby boomer may be more inclined to select advisors who work with the 78 million boomers.
Consider affiliating with other professionals (insurance, tax, legal) so you can focus on delivering planning and investment advice and services to your target audience(s).
