In today’s digital world, the best place to find new prospects is online. From web design and SEO to content marketing, email newsletters, social media, and more, it’s essential to have a comprehensive digital marketing strategy in place. To help you draw in more leads, here are some top digital marketing tips for financial advisors.
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Establish Your Online Presence
Before you can begin digital marketing for your business, you need to establish an online presence. The first step is to invest some time and money into a professional website. Your website is where all of your digital marketing efforts will converge. You can think of it as your virtual office space. Digital marketing is all about driving traffic to your website—but all the traffic in the world won’t help you if the site doesn’t convert.
Work with a Professional Team
Unless you have experience designing websites, working with a professional web design team is absolutely essential. A professional team will be able to incorporate your branding, help you draft quality content, and ensure all technical aspects are up to par. Consider opting for a web design team that also has SEO experience, so you can ensure your site is set up appropriately to index for essential keywords and is ready to pull in organic traffic following launch.
Designing Your Site
The home page on your site is one of the most important landing pages. It should be engaging and direct. Provide a clear overview of your services, include prominent CTAs, and incorporate imagery that will resonate with your target demographic. Build out robust content for your service pages as well, with a dedicated page for each key service you provide. In all of your content, clearly outline your offering and highlight any key advantages of working with you compared to your competitors. And don’t forget to include a prominent contact page and/or contact forms, so you can actually capture leads!
Mobile First Design
Your website should be optimized for both desktop and mobile viewing, and your page load speed should be fast. 53% of web traffic comes from mobile users, and the majority of users will abandon a site if it takes more than three seconds to load. The good news is that most modern web design platforms offer mobile-adaptive themes, which can adjust your site seamlessly for both mobile and desktop viewing.
Add a Video to Tell Your Story
Despite extensive documentation on the effectiveness of video marketing, most financial advisors don’t have a video on their home page. Don’t make that mistake. Hire a professional to make your video, and keep it short. Thirty seconds is optimal for a landing page, and blog videos should be no longer than two minutes.
A selectively placed video offers the following benefits:
- Establish brand personality
- Engage your potential customers
- Increase your credibility
- Improve lead conversion
Your videos can serve other purposes in your digital marketing campaign as well. Consider sharing your videos on social media, including it in your email newsletters, and blogs.
Email Capture and Frequency of Communication
A prospect may not decide to hire you after just one visit to your website. People are looking for someone to trust their financial future to. The confidence required for that takes time to build. That’s why email capture is so important in any financial advisor digital marketing campaign. Consider including prominent CTAs to sign up for your newsletter—or include a pop-up on your site to help build your email list.
Once you’ve captured an email address, the next question is how often to communicate with the prospect. Once or twice a week is best practice. Emailing every other day has been proven to reduce engagement. You don’t want to be a pest. Carefully worded, well thought-out weekly emails are best for building trust. Use a CRM platform to track prospect status, and target your content to leads based on their goals, lead status, etc.
Write Weekly Blog Posts
A regular blog can be a great way to target relevant keywords and draw increased organic traffic to your site. It can also be a great way to establish yourself as a thought leader and build user confidence. And, of course, your blog can be used to capture leads, email addresses and more. You should also share your blogs across all of your platforms. From social media to email, you can “double up” on your blog content, including engaging excerpts and links across your platforms to encourage users to read more on your site.
If you don’t have time to write blogs yourself, hire a reliable writer or agency to produce your blog content for you. If you do choose to write your own articles, set aside some dedicated time each week to do it. A regular publishing schedule is important. Consider producing weekly or bi-weekly blogs for best results.
Targeted Marketing on Social Media
Posting your website URL on your personal Facebook page will NOT generate the kind of business you’re looking for. Instead, create a dedicated Facebook business page for your practice. Include the site link on your LinkedIn and Twitter profiles as well. Each of these platforms reaches a different type of audience, and your marketing should be tailored accordingly.
To avoid getting lost in user’s feeds, set up a Facebook business page and create a targeted audience. You can then “boost” your posts with paid ads to ensure they are displayed within the feeds of your target audience. The targeting mechanism in Facebook works well, and the cost per click (CPC) is typically lower than with LinkedIn advertising. You should consider boosting posts on LinkedIn as well, just keep in mind that you’ll need a higher budget for that.
Twitter and Instagram marketing is all about hashtags. Don’t expect users to search for you specifically. They’re looking for topics, and those are represented by hashtags. For example, if you write about risk management, add #riskmanagement to the end of your post. Couple that with a compelling image and you should get some decent traffic.
Digital Marketing is All About Quality Content
You may have figured this out already. Content is king for digital marketing. Whether you’re making videos, writing blog posts, or composing your home page, the quality of your content will determine the level of your success. In the beginning, you can create the content yourself, but consider hiring a professional once you start to grow your client base. From performing keyword research and generating engaging topic ideas to ensuring high levels of production and tracking results, working with a marketing professional can help ensure you get the most value out of your budget.
Let’s Get Started
We hope these digital marketing tips for financial advisors have helped you to organize your next campaign. If you’re ready to define your brand and build your business online, contact Good Life Companies to learn more about our comprehensive financial advisor marketing services.
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