Every financial advisor has a website. They would be conspicuous if they didn’t have them. But, less than 20% of financial advisors say their websites produce a consistent flow of leads for their firms. This is a major pain point for the 80% plus of financial advisors that want to use the Internet to produce high-quality leads for their firms.
There are three identifiable challenges that must be resolved in order for financial advisor websites to be more productive:
- The advisors’ websites must have online visibility
- The online visibility must produce traffic to their websites
- Websites must convert traffic into leads and contacts
Based on years of experience, there is a good chance financial advisors are being impacted by low visibility, traffic, and conversion rates.
Advisors can have great websites, but when there is no online visibility, there is no traffic that their websites can convert into leads and contacts.
The opposite is also true. Financial advisor websites can have excellent online visibility, but the websites themselves were not designed to convert visitors into qualified leads and contacts.
There can be a lot of reasons why financial advisor websites fail to deliver results. The one we will address in this article is based on the process that investors use when they depend on the Internet to help them find and research financial advisors.
What is more important, finding or researching financial advisors?
A high percentage of financial advisors are focused on the processes that investors use to “find” them on the Internet. There is no question that finding advisors is an important function, but we don’t believe it is the most important function. That’s because there are a lot of ways for investors to find financial advisors. However, there is only one way for investors to “research” financial advisors and “maintain” their anonymity.
We believe researching advisors is more important than finding advisors. After all, it is the research that causes investors to interview particular advisors and the research is conducted on the Internet when investors visit financial advisor websites and Google search their names.
Why do investors use a process of exclusion?
What exactly are financial advisors up against when investors use the Internet to find and research advisors. The answer is exclusion!
It stands to reason when investors use the Internet to conduct research, they are screening several financial advisors and plan on contacting the few that they like the best. For example, they visit eight financial advisor websites, initiate contact with four, and ultimately select one.
On the one hand, investors should know enough to select the best financial advisors for the right reasons: Credentials, ethics, business practices, and fees. This would require an objective process that enabled investors to gather information, compare multiple advisors, and select the best firm.
However, that is not the way a high percentage of investors select their advisors. They tend to base their selection decisions on subjective processes so they select the financial advisors they like the best. In this case, their biggest risk is selecting the advisors with the best sales skills.
They still need a process that gets them from the eight they found on the Internet, to the four they plan to interview, to the one they plan to hire.
We believe most investors use a process of exclusion because they have stronger feelings about what they don’t want than who are the best financial advisors. How do we know this? They must have a process for getting from eight to four to one. And we know this process starts on the Internet.
The challenge for financial advisors is to make the cuts by providing the information that investors are seeking.
Do financial advisor sales funnels start on the Internet?
There are a lot of ways for investors to find financial advisors. But, the easiest and safest way is to use the Internet. Enter a few keywords and investors have a huge array of financial advisors they can contact.
Why is the Internet safer? Investors can maintain their anonymity while they not only find financial advisors but also research them. This is a lot different than a couple of decades ago when investors had to contact financial advisors to learn more about them.
So, it doesn’t matter if the investors found the financial advisors on the Internet or through a referral from a friend. What matters is they used the Internet to research financial advisors and this fact-finding determines who they contact for interviews.
Our research shows 82% of investors will visit financial advisor websites and 64% will Google search their names.
How are website disclosure practices a blend of objective and subjective information?
Most financial advisors want to provide enough information that investors contact them for interviews or information. But, they don’t want to give them so much information, that investors don’t believe they have to talk to advisors to select them.
Fee schedules are an example of this conundrum. Some advisors ignore the topic of compensation in its entirety. There is simply no reference to compensation on their websites.
Other advisors describe how they are compensated: Fee-only, asset-based fee, subscription fee, fixed fee, etc. But they do not disclose how much they are compensated.
Very few financial advisors publish their fee schedules on their websites. They do not want competitors to know what they charge. And, they do not want to give investors reasons to exclude them from their searches.
The small percentage that publishes fee schedules on their websites believe their fee schedules give them a competitive advantage.
The disclosure practices of financial advisors create a risk and an opportunity.
How do financial advisor websites impact lead flow?
In our example, we assume investors will visit eight or more websites to identify the four finalists they want to interview.
Subjectivity means they select the advisors they like the most for interviews. Exclusion means they delete the advisors they like the least. These selection and exclusion decisions are happening on the websites of financial advisors.
Perhaps this is why video can have such a big impact on the process. It is a more effective way to communicate the personalities of firms and principals on their websites.
How does a website make better connections with investors?
There is an easy answer. Websites make connections when they provide the information that investors are looking for “and” they are competitive with other financial advisors websites.
The challenge is to not get excluded during the investors’ selection processes.
How does digital marketing impact the sales funnels of financial advisors?
Digital marketing uses the Internet to produce and nurture leads for financial advisors.
The Internet is where investors go to find financial advisors and conduct their research. This is the top of the sales funnel and it impacts the rest of the steps in the funnel.
The impact of digital marketing is profound because it impacts who investors contact for interviews. No interviews, no new clients.
Are there any cheap, productive digital marketing solutions?
It may depend on your definition of cheap. Hundreds or thousands of dollars per month?
There are cheap template-based websites that are designed to function like online sales brochures. That is, they deliver information about firms and the professionals who work for them. However, they are not designed to convert visitors into qualified leads and contacts.
There are cheap ways to acquire blog articles for content marketing, but these articles do not have any SEO value because Google has already seen the content.
Unfortunately, the answer is no. Google creates the rules that determine who makes it onto the first three pages for the keywords that really matter. And the space is intensely competitive because a lot of financial advisors have the same goal - page one visibility.
You have to play by Google’s rules to have top rankings for the keywords that matter.
