9 Essential Financial Advisor Marketing Ideas, Tips & Strategies
November 5, 2020
Originally published 8/7/19
Here are nine financial marketing ideas that are essential in the digital economy. Learn how to communicate value, get clients to connect to your solutions emotionally and retain your best clients for a lifetime.
#1: Hone your website
Today, a handshake will not be your first impression with most people. Instead, they’ll hear about you or find you on search, then check out your website.
There is a lot about being successful as a financial advisor that has to do with the impression you make, and your website is no exception. It’s an expectation that a wealth management professional will have an organized, sharp website.
Here is an example of one of our mockups:
You need a clean, modern design that’s sophisticated yet simple. Information needs to be clear and easy to find. And today, of course, it needs to be mobile responsive so people get the best experience on their mobile device.
Important tip: Have a strong call to action
When a potential client visits your website, what do you want them to do? Call? Sign up for a newsletter? Download a whitepaper? Schedule a consultation on a form?
Beyond making an impression about your business, your website is also a lead-generation tool. Make sure it’s designed around your business objective.
This is your website’s call to action.
Don’t just expect people to act. Tell them directly what you want them to do. Highlight that action (as with the yellow color), and make it easy to complete.
This is how you turn a website visitor into a lead.
#2: Focus on a specialization
Why should a client choose you instead of your competition? What do you offer that they don’t?
There is a heuristic we use in marketing that says when you try to please everybody, you end up delighting nobody. The best you can do is average, which is a tough sell with online marketing.
Consumers today love specialists. They are empowered by the computers in their hands to find the exact solution to their problem. We all assume that someone who specializes in a particular service is better at it — which is a pretty safe assumption.
Do you work more with small businesses, executives or retirees? Do you specialize in a particular area, of finance such as divorce, retirement or asset management?
Develop a unique value proposition for your financial services. Note an area that you’re strong in and where you have an advantage over the competition.
Outline what you do on your homepage, first thing. If you do this well, you’ll have a huge advantage over the multitude of financial planners whose websites are filled with vague platitudes about financial security.
If you don’t have an area of professional specialization, note your customer service or other policy. Give people a reason to choose you.
Pro tip: Highlight your status as a fiduciary
If you are a certified financial planner (CFP), work on a fee-only basis and have a fiduciary oath you sign for your clients, highlight these attributes.
A lot of people don’t trust financial planners today because so many are sales brokers who don’t operate with the client’s best interests in mind. The 2008 crash didn’t do much to help the financial world’s reputation, either.
If you are a fiduciary, you have a strong value proposition to offer clients. Be sure to highlight it in your marketing material.
#3. Avoid financial jargon
When it comes to marketing content, you need to speak in a language your clients understand.
Avoid stilted styles that make you sound like a professor teaching a graduate class. Also, translate financial jargon into language that resonates with the layperson.
Financial advisor websites tend to fall into two categories. Either they are dry, jargonistic and confusing, or they’re trite and overly general.
Here is an excerpt from The Minimalist that has a really solid voice for explaining retirement planning:
Youth is wasted on the young. Often, money is, too.
Back in my corporate days, when I managed scores of retail stores and hundreds of employees, I stressed the importance of planning for retirement—as well as saving for future goals—with every person I hired. Before the start of their very first shift, I would sit down with each new team member and show them how to save for retirement without stress, worry, complexity, or pain. Within a few minutes, I could literally see the difference in their physiology as trepidation drained from their facial features and, after we spent 30 minutes examining their options, confidence began to take over once they realized planning for retirement is much simpler than they thought.
Avoid jargon and being overly complex, but at the same time, don’t treat people like dunces. A causal, professional voice works best for explaining financial concepts.
Pro tip: Use an infographic
Many fast-moving online consumers respond better to visual content. You can get your message across effectively using an infographic like this:
#4. Start getting reviews
Online reviews now play a major role in the decision-making process of most consumers. For many business verticals, reviews on Google, Yelp, Top Rated Local and even Facebook are crucial to gaining the trust of prospective clients.
As of this writing, financial advisors are lagging in regard to reviews; many have none at all.
This is an opportunity for you to gain a competitive advantage.
Start bringing up the topic of online reviews with your best clients. Choose people who’ve worked with you successfully for several years and who would do you a favor as a friend. Ask them to write up something about their experience for one or more of these platforms.
Also, if your portfolio is really building, make sure you’re showing up on Barron’s top advisor rankings.
Depending on your location, you may find a variety of niche sites rating advisors. To find them, do a search for “best financial advisors + location” and investigate what ranks on page one. Find out how you can get rated for sites that look credible.
#5. Rank for “financial advisor” searches
Many people looking for a financial advisor will start out by getting on their phone and asking Google.
The two mainstays of Google and Bing for paid and organic search are still vital to your online financial advisor marketing.
Today, it’s important to have well-defined campaigns for both your pay-per-click (PPC) and organic (SEO) campaigns.
PPC advertising tends to work better as direct-response with short, to-the-point copy. Because you’re bidding on a position, these ads will rank at the very top of search results. And because you’re paying for each click, you want to try to target people who are more likely to convert right away.
Use PPC for the most competitive keyword phrases and keywords that indicate the person is ready to hire a financial advisor. Link your ads to landing pages with a matching message and strong call to action.
For SEO, consider content meant to connect with the online researcher trying to figure out their financial and investment options.
Use blog articles to rank for longer, research-based keyword phrases. Showcase your expertise, and use this content to develop a sense of trust. The more content you create, the better your website (including your Google local listing) will rank.
Set up and optimize your Google My Business page.
This is a free listing that connects to Google Maps. It’s the primary way that Google knows where your service area is so you come up for local searches. Optimize your descriptions with keywords and try to get customer reviews to increase your ranking.
#6. Develop video content
Many financial advisors don’t use video, which opens up another competitive opportunity for those who do.
Start with a basic video commercial you can embed on your homepage, and use this as your intro YouTube video. The focus will be on your value proposition. For example:
Beyond this, you can make short informational videos for your YouTube channel and social media. Offer advice as well as tips and tricks on how to plan for retirement and manage savings. Also, embed these videos in blog articles on your website, and optimize them for SEO.
#7. Social media marketing
Social media marketing can be a very effective way for financial advisors to create a personalized voice and make connections with their audience online.
However, financial advisors also have to be careful about compliance issues. While you share useful information, “endorsing” content can get you trouble with issues outlined in FINRA Regulatory Notice 10-06.
Also, per FINRA Rule 3110, you are required to retain records of social media activities and avoid deleting any interactions. There are no current rules on how long you have to keep these records, but it’s common practice for firms to keep them for three years.
Be aware of Facebook’s personal attributes policy. If your ad directly implies someone has a financial problem, it will be disapproved.
Outside of this, use social media as a way to share useful tips, firm updates and curated content for clients.
You’ll also want to network on LinkedIn, which is probably the most-used social channel for financial advisors.
If you outsource social media management, be sure to work with a marketing company that understands compliance concerns. Often, you’ll need to review and approve posts yourself to make sure everything is compliant.
#8. Resources and associations
There are many resources available for financial planners that will help with marketing and networking. Some are meant for the public to help them find planners, and also worth being aware of. Recommended:
Financial Planning Association
National Association of Personal Financial Advisors
National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors
Society of Financial Service Professionals
#9: Put software to work for you
When most small business owners and professionals look at digital marketing today, they come to the same conclusion — this is overwhelming.
It’s easy to feel that way. Digital life moves so fast it becomes too much of a good thing, indispensable yet intractable.
Not to mention that covering all these marketing channels is a job unto itself.
But, maybe the most frustrating thing is how hard it is to track your marketing ROI. There are loads of data (more than you want, really), but turning it into cohesive reporting is a challenge.
This is why we developed the Marketing 360®, a one-of-a-kind, all-in-one digital marketing platform to help you manage and grow your financial business.
We tie into all the disparate online platforms and create one software interface and reporting tool.
From one platform, you can create and schedule social posts, launch and monitor ads, manage your payments, keep track of your performance and so much more.
It’s a major time saver.
Also, this connects to a CRM so you can collect and manage all of your contacts (from lead to customer). And it ties into email marketing software, so you can manage those campaigns.
Marketing is a lot like wealth management. Make the right investments and they’ll pay off. Marketing 360 is the best marketing investment you’ll ever make.
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