As a financial advisor, you have great questions regarding the best prospects for new clients. The answer is to use lead generation software. Software is basically online or downloadable client management and attraction system that provides you with prospecting tools which can help you in finding clients that are ready to be provided with financial services.
Have you ever wondered whom to target when seeking new clients for financial advisor? You want prospects that can afford your services. But how do you go about finding prospects that are within your reach? Today we are going to cover some free leads for financial advisors. This way you can satisfy your curiosity of what they actually do and how.
Getting new clients for your financial advising business can be a tough one. That’s where lead generation software for financial advisors comes in handy. You can save yourself lots of time and guarantee contact with your ideal prospects.
Are you interested in gaining qualified leads for your business? Whether you’re a financial advisor looking to gain more clients or a company trying to expand your sales channels, these prospects are exactly what you need.
Are Financial Advisor Lead Generation Services worth it?
We’ve all heard the incredulous statement, “Nobody looks for a financial advisor on the Internet.” The biggest question that most financial advisors have about lead generation services is about their legitimacy. The logical assumption is that if finding qualified high net worth individuals with money to manage is so hard for a highly credentialed financial expert, how could it be possible for some third party firm?
Let’s start with the question of what a financial advisor lead generation service is, shall we? A financial advisor lead generation service is a company that seeks to capture leads for financial advisors through the Internet. Many lead of them target individuals seeking financial advice through what is called pay-per-click advertisements.
How do these financial advisor lead generation services work? When somebody types in, for example, “financial advisor in Milwaukee, Wisconsin” or “how to get 401k advice in Tucson, Arizona”, ads come up which refer the person to a lead generation website where they can search for a financial advisor.
Once the lead is gathered, usually it is qualified and verified before being passed on to the financial advisor subscribing to the lead generation service. But do verify that before you sign up for the service.
Do people really seek financial advice through the Internet?
The times they are a’changin.
Can a financial advisor get leads through the Internet? Yes! With the digital boom, this is a huge opportunity for financial advisors serving the Internet-friendly Generations X and Y. They trust the Internet so much that they’ll go so far as to work with a Roboadvisor, for goodness sake.
If are a financial advisor looking to get leads online but does not want to buy them, you’ll need to put a repeatable process in place that you can execute inhouse. The video below talks about financial advisor prospecting on social media and gives some ideas of the approach to take.
Do Financial Advisor Lead Generation Services Work?
Are financial advisor lead generation services worth it?
There are three important things for financial advisors who are using a lead generation service to consider:
- Competition
- Degree of vettedness
- Distance
#1 Financial advisor lead generation services increase competition among the financial advisors
One important thing to keep in mind about a lead generation service is the highly competitive entry point. Think about the online buyer’s mindset. By the time somebody has launched a financial advisor search, and especially if they’re doing this through the Internet search engines, they are “in the market.” The competition level has increased dramatically and it’s likely they’re already talking to a few other advisors, both online and through their own personal network. Everyone has that one uncle who thinks he knows how to trade stocks!
Then, the lead generation service itself sends the prospect multiple financial advisor profiles, not just one. You’ve got competitors coming at you from all angles. The analogy I would make is it’s like applying for a job on Monster.com. Once the job opening is posted, word is out and you’re competing with every qualified candidate on the street.
Now, that’s not to presume that you can’t successfully close the lead. It means that you’re not the only player in the game at that point. You’ll probably have to work harder to earn the sale than if you had come up with the lead organically.
#2 Not a financial advisor lead generation services sell truly high quality leads
My experience working with these companies has been that some leads are true financial advisor leads, while others are not legit. Some companies don’t bother to actually vet the leads and then you end up with a lead that’s not qualified, verified, or worth following up on. Check for the refund policy before you sign up for the service.
#3 There can be considerable distance from the prospect
The other aspect to consider is population density. If you live in a rural area, you might end up having to travel far to meet these leads if the conversation progresses.
Are Lead Generation Services for Financial Advisors Worth the Cost?
Most of these services render a subscription fee and some have an additional charge per lead. While many financial advisors cringe at the cost of a lead, consider this point.
If you had to create your own lead capture functionality on your own website, it would cost way more than a few couple hundred dollars a month. Consider the cost of an SEO consultant probably starts at about $500 per month at minimum, and that’s not even taking into account the amount of time your marketing person would have to spend producing content to place onto your website, as well as the thousands for your Google Adwords budget. And SEO isn’t immediate, either. It takes a few months before you typically see results. We’re talking about thousands upon thousands of dollars here. If a lead gen service is willing to do the work for you, you’re probably not overpaying.
However, on the other hand, there are several ways that financial advisors can get leads other than buying them.
Obtaining Leads Without Purchase
- SEO keyword optimized blogs and YouTube videos
- Social media platforms (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram)
- Creating podcasts about retirement, college planning, and other wealth management related topics
- Writing email newsletters
- Attending in person networking events
- Getting new leads through referrals/word of mouth
Strategy #1: Establish Trust by Providing Value
In financial advisor marketing and in content marketing in general, one of the most common – and effective – lead generation strategies is the freebie.
It’s a simple concept. You give prospects something free that’s either useful to them or necessary, as a precursor to converting them to a paying client. If your advisory business has an associated website and blog, for example, this can come in the form of informative posts that solve a problem or answer a question for prospects. This is a strategy that Shawn Plummer, CEO of The Annuity Expert, has successfully used to capture an audience and generate clients through his website.
“I leverage my expertise on annuities and insurance to educate visitors, provide thought leadership and position myself as an expert,” Plummer says. “This increases the trust I have with my visitors, which in turn increases the likelihood that they may reach out for a quote.”
If you don’t have a free offering, consider what you can do to create one. This could mean establishing a blog but it could also involve the creation of a free podcast or webinar. The goal is to identify what potential leads are looking for and what answers or solutions you’re able to provide.
Strategy #2: Reverse Engineer Social Media
Social media can be an integral part of an advisor’s marketing and lead generation plan. After all, this may be the first contact a prospective client has with your advisory business. Establishing a presence on social media matters but consider how that time is spent. Paul Sundin, certified public accountant, tax strategist and CEO of Emparion in Chandler, Arizona, says it’s important to go beyond the basics of just creating profiles or making an offer.
“To have effective lead generation as a financial advisor, you need to do market research,” Sundin says.
Specifically, it’s important to research the patterns that entice your target market, he noted. Social media can be an invaluable tool for that.
“Search for customer reviews, activities on different social media platforms and overall social media behavior,” he added. “Once you see the pattern for the keywords that entices them, use the keywords in your copy and content.”
This, says Sundin, can be a recipe for driving the right people to your website.
Strategy #3: Cultivate Leads Through Current Clients
Unless you’re starting from zero with clients you may have a built-in resource for lead generation. Asking current clients for referrals can be one of the easiest and most effective ways to grow your advisory business.
“Clients have busy lives and even though they like you, it may not occur to them that you’re looking for new prospects,” says Alvin Carlos, certified financial planner and managing partner at Washington, D.C.-based District Capital Management. “Tell them you’re looking to help 10 new clients this year and you’d rather help those that are important to them.”
This allows you to continue to provide value to your current clients by demonstrating that you care about the people who are close to them. And it can create a continuing cycle of lead generation if those new clients continue to refer others to your business.
Approaching existing clients for referrals can be as simple as mentioning it in your regular email newsletter. And if you aren’t yet using email to stay connected with current or prospective clients, that’s another avenue for generating leads that you may want to invest some time in exploring.
Strategy #4: Use Lead Generation Services
Chasing leads can be tiring and time-consuming. Lead generation services can save you precious time that you could then redirect toward serving your existing client base. If you’ve never used a lead generation service before, you could be missing out on an opportunity to have tailored leads delivered right to you.
SmartAdvisor, for instance, supplies you with leads that fit your target client profile. By signing up, you can effectively put lead generation on autopilot.
You can also take advantage of lead generation services as a member of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA), says Carlos. To join, you do need to be a fee-only financial planner. But, he says “the biggest cost is the 60 hours of continuing education credit you need to maintain.”
SHOULD ADVISORS USE ADVERTISING?
You have seen the ways the big brands advertise for leads in the major search engines.
They have the deep pockets that are necessary to maintain 18 hour per day exposure for the best keywords.
Many smaller financial advisory firms do not have the marketing budgets to compete with them on page one for hours per day. They may bid a higher click rate fee, but based on the daily spend, the ad may disappear in a matter of minutes and be replaced by an advertiser who pays a lower click rate but has a much bigger daily spend.
Hypothetically, people who click on ads are currently looking for financial advisors. On the other hand, some advisors say they pay for 8-10 clicks to get one conversion (someone who submits data). The other 7-9 clicks do not provide the requested information on landing pages. This becomes a cost of doing business – paying for clicks that do not produce leads.
Facebook advertising is a more affordable alternative for smaller firms. Facebook publishes ads based on demographic data. People who see the ad may or may not be looking for a financial advisor. This reality reduces results but also lowers the cost.
Conclusion
If you are a financial advisor, you can get leads for new clients from affinity groups such as charitable and social organizations. The member prospect list is made of audiences that have expressed their interest in your products or services. The idea of getting new leads through affinity groups might sound new to financial advisors. But it’s actually old news, only because most advisors are not familiar with the practice.
If you are a financial advisor, you are in need of lead generation software. The process of generating leads is time consuming. It depends on how many requests you receive from clients and prospects. Lead generation software helps you streamline your workflow, eliminate the tasks that take up your valuable time and concentrate on the most important aspects of your business, this will make your job easier and faster.