A financial advisor needs a steady flow of clients in order to maintain his practice. It’s possible to do this on your own, but word will spread fast about your practice, and soon you will be flooded with requests for advice.
Lead generation services in financial advisory are essential to attract new clients. Our financial advisors directory provides complimentary leads, referrals and sales opportunities to help you convert clients faster. Generate a code and get free high-quality prospects today!
You are a financial advisor, looking at ways to generate more $$. Every other month, you read or hear of something new but then it doesn’t work out. You have a million things to do and it is hard to find the time to get these leads. Did you know that there are services that offer free leads? These free leads can be high quality and very interested in what you have to say. Take a look at this article on lead generation services for financial advisors.
Business has been slow. You sat in your office and kept thinking about how to generate lead for your business. financial advisors association , you have to find ways on how to get leads that can help you with the client acquisition.
Analysis of Financial Advisor Lead Generation Companies
Let me start off by saying that I am not officially endorsing any of these companies; this rudimentary analysis is meant to inform and educate only. If you are interested, you should do your own research and contact the company directly. In the analysis below, I identify what I perceive to be what makes each financial advisor lead generation company different from one to the next. This is based upon my experience which is anecdotal and can not be presumed to apply universally to every person to participates with these companies.
What are the major lead generation companies for financial advisors? If you are a financial advisor who wants to buy leads, you may want to look at:
- SmartAsset
- Paladin
- WiserAdvisor
- GuideVine
- Right Financial Advisor
I’ve analyzed each of these financial advisor lead companies below.
SmartAsset
SmartAsset attracts high net worth investors to their site by writing informative articles and offering other online resources to them. They then compel the investors to exchange their email address for these resources.
In my experience, I have found mixed results. I have seen that many financial advisors who buy leads from SmartAsset haven’t been exactly satisfied, however I have also heard from a few advisors that did have some amount of success in getting a few new clients. In my view this probably has to do with the way the leads are collected. If you are curious to learn more about this company then please contact me directly.
Paladin
Paladin provides not only lead generation services but also turnkey digital marketing services for companies without the marketing resources to set up a website, create a branding campaign, etc. They even offer compliance support. Paladin has been in business since 2003. I like that the company offers several different levels of lead gen service (Platinum, Gold, Silver) depending on what the advisor needs.
WiserAdvisor
UPDATE: Note that since the publishing of this blog, WiserAdvisor and Paladin are now one company.
WiserAdvisor has been in the business almost 20 years, and from what I can see this is the longest track record in the game. WiserAdvisor is strictly in the business of lead generation.
What strikes me about Wiser Advisor is that there seems to be much more third party commentary on this company than all their competitors. Perhaps this is a result of the company’s long track record. You can read what investors and even other financial advisors are saying in the 50+ reviews on TrustPilot and several other Internet sites.
GuideVine
Started a little over five years ago, GuideVine is the new baby on the block of financial advisor lead generation providers. While it maybe doesn’t have the longest track record, it does come with a few more bells and whistles than the other options. For example, advisors can make a video to introduce themselves to prospects and include it as part of their profile. GuideVine even has a team that will assist you with creating this video. The video feature is pretty significant, considering that seeing is believing and being able to experience the financial advisor on video is helpful to building trust.
Right Financial Advisor
Right Financial Advisor has a unique video chat feature that enables investors to connect with an advisor before meeting. It’s a great way to ease the pressure and make the investor feel more comfortable with the advisor. From the LinkedIn company page it appears the company been in existence since 2013.
HOW DO WEBSITES GENERATE LEADS?
Most of the time, financial advisor websites are designed to disseminate information about the firm. They are not designed to produce leads for the firms. That takes a different type of website that is structured to generate new leads.
Let’s assume your Inbound Marketing efforts are producing a steady flow of traffic to your website. Your website has a one-time opportunity to convert these visitors into qualified leads.
The best visitors will be actively seeking financial advisors. They will review the content on the site, and if they like what they see, they will initiate contact to schedule an initial screening call.
The next best visitor is looking for financial information that will help them make financial decisions. One type of information is how to select the best financial advisor. More often, they are seeking information that will help them resolve a financial pain point. They will register to obtain the information they are seeking, so you have their contact information.
The third type of visitor is seeking information about local service providers. They do not contact you and they do not register for a free offer. They are researching advisors they will contact in the future – for example, when they are closer to their retirement dates.
THE BIGGEST MISTAKE ADVISORS MAKE WHEN THEY GENERATE LEADS
Some advisors tell us they have very low close ratios when they follow-up leads. They have trouble reaching the leads, competing with other advisors, converting leads into prospects, and converting prospects into revenue-producing clients.
What many advisors fail to recognize is how cautious investors go about selecting the advisors they want to talk to and eventually hire. They are cautious because they had a bad experience with previous advisors, or this is the first time they have hired an advisor.
One way for investors to exercise caution is to view all of the information that will help them make the right decisions. It starts with visiting the advisor’s website to learn more about the firm. The site will create a first impression and deliver key information that will impact the investors’ selection processes. The website has to be competitive with the other sites that are viewed by investors.
Investors also Google search firm and advisor names. Does what they see confirm that the advisor is a trustworthy financial expert because that is what the investor is seeking.
The big mistake is not managing what investors see on the Internet. What investors see can help financial advisors win new clients or cost them opportunities when investors select someone else.
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.
CAN WEBSITES QUALIFY LEADS
This is definitely a two-edged sword. Let’s say your firm has a hard $1,000,000 minimum asset requirement. Website visitors who want to schedule interviews or register for a free offer are routed to a landing page that captures their information.
One of their required fields could be to disclose the amount of money they have available for investment. If the indicated amount is less than your minimum an automatic message is displayed indicating they do not meet your minimum.
Or, the content on your website or landing page discloses your minimum thereby discouraging people with less than your minimum from submitting their contact information or registering for a free offer.
The other side of the sword is do you want to exclude people who may not meet your minimum today but could meet your minimum in the future. For example, their current asset amount is $500,000, but they are retiring in nine months and will be rolling $1.5 million from their 401k account into a rollover IRA. At that point, they will meet your minimum.
We recommend talking to anyone who wants immediate contact and dripping on anyone who registers for one of the offers on your website. You can qualify them during your initial call.
The Importance of Perspective in Lead Generation for Financial Advisors
In our own experience, the ROI that we’ve seen from sites like these is definitely positive – but the closing rate is unquestionably far lower than organic search or referrals. One out of 10 is still an acceptable ROI when you’re talking about $500,000 in assets. However, as always, your mileage may vary. We believe that the key to making sure these types of qualified lead resources work for your own financial services firm is to be open to trying one channel for a set amount of time before you move onto another. You need to be flexible, but also aware. Once it feels like you’ve gotten enough activity to your sales funnel and you’ve found all the potential clients you can, move onto another and start the process again. You may stick with one channel for six months or even a year. Try these types of paid lead sources and directories that your digital marketing firm partner is recommending – assuming that they are working exclusively for RIAs, of course – or what he or she has seen with other clients. See what type of tangible return on investment you can get. If one channel does not perform the way you need it to, don’t be afraid to move on. You also need to be aware that there are more opportunities out there in terms of lead generation for financial advisors than you probably realize. With that in mind, here are a list of qualified lead resources for financial advisors that you’re definitely going to want to explore as soon as you can. Also bear in mind that there is an additional benefit of working with these paid lead sources. If they have a directory that you can get listed in, and they have high domain authority, then you get the added benefit – oftentimes dramatic – of having a powerful backlink into your site.
Conclusion
For financial advisors, the internet has allowed for infinite opportunities for new business. While this can provide unparalleled opportunities for advisors to compete on a much larger scale, it also means that you have competition. The question then becomes how to win more business.
There’s no question that lead generation is the cornerstone of any successful financial advisory practice. Finding potential clients using marketing techniques and then converting them into paying clients is the dream. But lots of advisors struggle with this, and that’s why we want to help you.