Are you curious about lead generation for financial advisors? Or about best lead generation for financial advisors? Financial Services marketing can be a bit tricky, so it is unfortunate that many advisors have a hard time getting leads and converting them into a payments stream. In this article, we will take a look at some of the methods that have proven to work for others. Most importantly, however, we will provide you with a comprehensive framework you can use to evaluate new methods as they come out.
If you’re like me, you’ve no doubt heard a lot about lead gen for financial advisors. But I bet you still have a bunch of questions about it. That’s why I’ve set out to share with you everything you need to know about this timely topic. You’ll learn the most effective types of advertising and marketing available today that generate leads for financial advisors. So keep reading and discover how you can start using these to get more leads and convert these into clients.
Discover actionable insights for generating leads and seizing new opportunities. This eBook provides seven essential actions for advisors to take that will not only increase their potential for generating leads, but also provide an introduction to financial advisor marketing.
For a financial advisor actively seeking new clients, the best lead generation tactics will come from those entirely within your control. Do you need financial advisor leads? The solution may be as simple as monitoring your email inbox or creating one-off pitches to key contacts.
How Does Lead Generation For Financial Advisors Work?
Increases Your Trustworthiness
Many people these days will do an online search to discover the reputation of someone they would like to work with.
In the case of a financial advisor, there is a lot of competition. That’s why showcasing your firm, your self, and your portfolio can go a long way in beating out the competition.
Increases Online Visibility
More and more financial advisors are upping their online visibility.
Will you be left behind?
Establishing a solid online presence means you are giving yourself a much higher chance of being seen and contacted.
You are much likely to be found by a local consumer when you have a local-optimized website, a Google My Business Profile, and helpful social media posts.
Fills Up Your Funnel
Are you still chasing leads when you need work? That should never be the case.
When you have some extra time or room for more clients, you need a funnel full of potential clients ready to work with you.
With the power of lead generation for financial advisors, this could be the case. You will be reaching more and more consumers than ever before.
Therefore, you will always have people waiting for your services, and you can pick and choose clients that will be best for you.
Brand Awareness And Consistency
Leads are important for your brand, but any lead generation for financial advisors must be done in a manner that is consistent with your current message and brand image.
Consistency is crucial for building trust with both existing and potential customers.
For example, if you portray your brand as a financial advisor for high wealth clients, any lead generation you do needs to reflect your existing brand image.
All your marketing content needs to back up this message as well.
Your focus should be on how as a financial advisor you can help these high wealth clients achieve the extra things in life, i.e. second and third homes or boats.
Show how you can help them reach those goals.
The Importance Of Local SEO
Local SEO is one of the most important things you can do.
Local searches have experienced exponential growth. Searches that include the terms “open” or “near me” have exploded by over 200%. 46% of Google’s searches are for specific items within a person’s local community.
If you don’t have your site optimized for local SEO, you are missing out on countless local clients.
To ensure that you are ranking high in Google’s local searches, your website isn’t the only item you should be concerned with. Your business listing with
Google is also crucial for ranking in local search results. Forbes has shown that 71% of searchers will click on results shown on the first page of their Google search results. Without effective local SEO, you won’t land on this page.
Here are some simple tips you can take to make sure you are optimizing for local SEO searches.
- Make sure your Google My Business listing is optimized.
- Ensure that your website is mobile-friendly. Almost 60% of searches happen on a mobile device.
- Make sure your website has all applicable alt tags, along with search optimized URLs, headers, title tags, and keyword-based content.
- Have your website evaluated and incorporate a linking strategy.
- Make sure the business name and address on your site match the business name and address on your Google listing.
Using Social Media To Generate Leads For Your Business
Social media is now one of the largest platforms for digital advertising. Using these platforms is another chance to put your business in front of thousands of prospective clients.
Each platform has business services that can help you structure your experience on that platform to meet your needs.
To have success in lead generation for financial advisors, it will require the use of social media. There are more social media platforms today than most people can keep up with.
The key for any business is to be on as many that make sense for their company. You also want to utilize platforms that are the most popular with your core client.
Professional marketers can help firms make these decisions based on multiple demographic factors.
The biggest platforms for social media in the US are:
- Snapchat
Out of these platforms, Facebook has the largest reach and the largest number of daily users.
Instagram rivals Facebook in terms of the size of its audience. Since this network is also owned by Facebook, there is a lot of cooperation between the two platforms. Snapchat has the youngest demographics. Pinterest users are predominantly female.
LinkedIn often gets overlooked as a social network, but in terms of lead generation for financial advisors, it could bring a business a larger pool of interested leads.
Unlike other networks, people come to LinkedIn to hear professional things. It is a place for people to network and connect to others with the same careers and interests.
This also makes it a great place to offer your services and feature ads about your business. Behavior on this channel is more focused on celebrating work accomplishments and promoting the services of companies.
These reasons make it a terrific place to interact with people and find more leads.
Paid Advertising
Digital advertising is so precise that ads purchased on companies like Facebook can be customized for and only shown to your ideal audience.
The timing of the ad and how it is shown to a potential customer is all part of the package. From a cost perspective, paid digital advertising is one of the least expensive ways to promote your business.
Digital ads can be features almost anywhere.
But Google and Facebook are two of the most visible places for a digital ad. Google uses a pay-per-click model which charges you based on how many users click on your ad.
Facebook charges a fee per day based on how many users you want to reach with your campaign. Based on your budget, your ads can reach thousands of people each day.
You can also use digital ads on virtually any online platform. YouTube has banner ads that appear on videos. Instagram and Twitter also use digital ads. Pinterest has sponsored pins.
Once you know where to best connect with your audience, you will have countless options for a digital campaign.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for traditional advertising in lead generation. Marketing companies study what works best for each demographic.
Some subsets of the population still respond to direct mailers. If that demographic comes up in your lead generation, create brochures or other paper advertisements that can be mailed to your leads.
How do Financial Services Advisors Get Leads?
1. Create a website and make it valuable
Your website is (1) where you generate leads; (2) where potential customers come to learn more about your services; (3) hopefully both of these. Create a clean site that is easy to navigate and informative.
2. Publish a blog
You don’t just want website visitors; you want subscribers. That is, you want prospects to visit often. Make this happen by making your website a source of content prospects and customers find valuable by publishing a regular blog.
Your blog must provide visitors with the information they seek and get pages of your website to rank on search. And you must also share the content of your blog via social media and email.
Need ideas for blog topics? Look at what the top financial advisor blogs are doing.
I found this list of blog post categories at Kitces.com, where Michael Kitces offers “Nerd’s Eye View” for consumers and advisors.
3. Use your website to build an email list
Offer visitors to your website the opportunity to join your email list. Inspire people to volunteer their email addresses by offering content such as:
- Newsletters
- Helpful guides
- Interactive tools such as calculators or assessments
- Courses
- Videos
All of the above are ‘lead magnets.’ Promote your lead magnets on your website with buttons, displays or pop-ups that invoke forms designed to capture email addresses, and potentially, additional content information.
Aces! A pop-up offers this lead magnet at MaudlineEconomics.com. Notice (1) getting the special report calls for entering only a name and email, and (2) the pop-up indicates those that opt-in receive a complimentary e-letter.
4. Follow up your leads
Following up offline involves calling. Do so if and when your lead provides a phone number and indicates interest. Otherwise, follow up via email. You can do this manually if time permits, however, you can scale your email follow up far more efficiently with marketing-automation software.
These processes, which marketers call ‘lead nurturing,’ include tips, news, offers, or content or messages designed to warm the relationship and move you closer to a live consultation.
5. Run online ads
Mastering advertising is a perennial exercise in experimenting and optimizing to increase ROI. The digital arena, however, makes lead generation for financial advisors via advertising a far more efficient process. Most programs qualify as ‘pay-per-click.’ This means you only pay when you get a click and you get analytic insights to help you get more bang for your buck as you iterate your campaigns.
Consider these digital advertising programs:
6. Social media ads
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube are all viable channels. Identify your target market, research the media preferences of your best prospects, and give it a go. Your budget can start as low as $5 per day and you can increase your investment as your confidence grows and you become more accustomed to how much financial advisor leads cost on average.
This ad appeared in my LinkedIn feed today. Running ads to promote free content is a proven strategy for lead generation for financial advisors.
7. Search advertising
The search engine marketing programs offered via Google Ads and Microsoft instantly position your financial services company atop page one of a search engine results page.
Essentially, these systems are auctions where bids determine placements. Clicks can get expensive though, so it’s important to choose highly specific keywords and make smart-targeting decisions. Begin experimenting with search advertising for any amount of money, but if you plan to spend hundreds or thousands per month, consider enlisting the services of a PPC expert to improve conversion.
8. Discovery advertising
Discovery networks, such as Taboola, let you place native ads in the ‘recommended stories’ sections of large publishers and news sites. These can expose your financial services company to a massive audience, drive traffic to your website or landing page, and feed your sales funnel with new prospects. Costs are often lower than networks such as Google Ads.
If you’re looking for lead generation examples, check out how AIG leveraged some recent marketing videos to drive interest in their mortgage insurance product.
Conclusion
Every day, companies in the financial services industry are looking for ways to grow their business and generate new leads. In some ways, lead generation is more difficult for financial advisors than it is for other types of businesses. A lot of middlemen get in between the potential customers and the advisors.
The days of being stuck in an office all day long are over! Set your own schedule, work from anywhere and stop going to meetings. Financial Advisors from all over the country are doing this and making a fortune!