As a financial advisor, generating leads you can convert into clients is essential. Businesses tend to do this in many different ways, the most common being digital lead generation and physical lead generation. Physical generation focuses on in-person events, print, and more. At the same time, the digital side includes email marketing, webinars, websites and much more. Technology continues to evolve and expand as a vehicle for agency growth, leading agencies to invest in digital leads and digital lead generation. Because of this phenomenon, keeping your agency in the now is essential.
It’s time to bring your agency into the present and focus on digital lead generation. Beginning your digital journey starts with having the right strategies for success. We know digital lead generation can be a real challenge, so we’re here to provide you with great strategies that we’ve seen work. Read on and find out how our 4 Digital Lead Generation Strategies for Financial Advisors can help you!
Define Your Niche
Unsurprisingly, defining your niche is the first strategy on this digital lead generation journey, and that’s for a good reason. Creating a strategy without a plan is asking for it to fail. Not knowing your audience is like being up a creek without a paddle, and that never ends well. Without a doubt, the financial service industry is broad, so there’s a sea of potential clients that you need to narrow down. And targeting every potential client is not fiscally or physically viable – let alone effective. Luckily, every business in the industry can narrow down its audience and focus on specific niches.
As an example, make sure to narrow down your content to relate to your target audience, when they’re millennials, retirees, middle-aged people, certain professions, etc. It’s important to remember that this niche is who you will be serving, so ensure you can cater to them. Aim to become the most robust advisor in that field and dominate with excellent services and products.
In this situation, the best way to serve your audience after establishing a niche is to:
Create Great Content
Focus on the content you put out, whether it be a blog, email copy, or website. Ensure that the content you create is catered to your niche and is something that will help them on their financial journey. Try creating a blog with a consistent schedule to drive traffic to your site or schedule a weekly email with useful information.
Make Use of the Right Keywords
Attracting the right audience is one of the most important aspects of defining your niche. Using the correct keywords can help ensure that you’re using words your audience would be searching for. These keywords should be used on social media and in blogs.
Emphasize Your CTAs
Call-to-actions is an advisor’s best friend as it allows them to market to their audience and potentially convert leads to clients. Quality CTAs entice readers or visitors to engage or act on a suggestion such as “Sign Up for Our Monthly Newsletter” or “Book a Product Demo.” The most important thing to remember is to give clear, direct instructions in your CTA.
Use Scheduling Tools
Being able to accurately maintain a schedule is extremely important for financial advisors working with multiple different clients or onboarding new ones. No one wants to miss a meeting or forget about an important event or date. We recommend Calendly, a great platform for automation scheduling. It helps eliminate back-and-forth emails and gets you scheduling much faster.
Build a Blog
Blogging is one of the best ways to reach an audience, generate digital leads, and hit your targeted niche, allowing you to provide them with important information, current events, and other updates that might affect or influence them. A blog also allows you to use CTAs and funnel readers to your site to book demos, read up on your services, and more. Of course, blogging also helps with one of the most important aspects of a successful site which is SEO. As you may know, SEO help determines where your site will land on the SERP. It determines whether you’ve earned a spot on the first page or will fall to obscurity on page 24. For this reason, it’s essential to use your niche audience (if you have one) and target keywords in your blogs for them. This will ensure your blog helps boost your SERP and land your site on the front page.
Using SEO well isn’t the only aspect of running a successful blog, it’s essential to also:
Have a Consistent Schedule
Consistency is the key to any successful blog. Readers like to expect new posts, so try picking a day and time that works for you. Maybe it’s every Wednesday, every other Friday, or once a month. It may seem simple enough, but few advisors stick to their schedules. It’s important to set yourself up for success, so don’t set a schedule that you can’t keep to. If you have to post less often, then that’s perfectly fine.
Show off Your Expertise
If you’ve already found your niche, that’s most likely who you’ll be writing for, so it’s essential to show off your expertise. Readers should be able to put their trust in your blogs and see things at face value. Your goal is to provide them with accurate and helpful information while showing off your knowledge.
Keep Your Blogs Optimized
New blogs are great to push out. However, it’s also important to keep old blogs optimized. Considering the work you put into them, you don’t want to go to waste after their time in the spotlight is over. Go back every so often and try editing your blogs so that they can start gaining traffic again. Add in new and updated links, rewrite and optimize headers, rewrite paragraphs, and add new images. Lastly, republish and re-share.
Show off Your Social Side
These days social media is the place to engage with customers, potential leads, and even other financial advisors. Generating leads can be complex, but social media has swooped in and made it a whole lot easier to connect with new people. New people mean new potential leads, and that means more chances of customer conversion. But simply being on social media isn’t enough to make an impact. Your goal should be to differentiate yourself from any other advisor by doing something unique, whether in what you post or how you interact with your followers.
For example, let’s take a quick look at Wendy’s and its Twitter page. Most big fast-food restaurant chains post relatively the same, usually about what they’re doing to improve their food or making puns with their products. Wendy’s is slightly different in their approach as they like to make fun of their followers or other companies they mention. It’s all in good fun, and people eat it up, which has led to numerous tweets going viral.
The name of the social media game is differentiating yourself from the competition. How well you’re able to do this will affect the amount of lead generation you’ll be able to achieve. If you can’t stand out, it’ll be exponentially harder to bring in new followers and potential clients.
Some great ways to stand out on social media and generate digital leads are to:
- Show off your personality to attract new followers
- Share posts that aren’t just about business, social media’s supposed to be fun
- Try to post consistently, and don’t go radio silent for days at a time
- Don’t be BORING
Host Online Events
Thanks to the advancements in tech, we can now get together in online video and chat rooms and be social with each other. Online events have become a popular method for financial advisors who wish to engage with their audience and generate new leads. By providing an online environment, new leaders can enjoy the fun and see what your company is all about.
The beauty of online events is that everyone is welcome. No one is limited by distance, transportation, or any other concerns. Not being limited by those factors will inspire current clients, potential clients, and new leads to join in.
Some examples of online events you could host are:
Speed Networking
Much like speed dating, participants can quickly connect with people in the industry, organizations, other clients, and of course, new leads.
Webinar
Host a webinar that invites guests to learn about something new. Whether it’s a new way to market as a financial advisor, ways to save money as a customer, or any other topic you can think up.
Virtual Happy Hour
For a more casual experience, virtual happy hour invites people to bring their drinks and get to know each other more. This event brings a more casual and relaxing experience, encouraging guests to get acquainted.
Virtual Fundraiser
Help out nonprofits with a cause using an online fundraiser. Be sure to offer raffles and contests to add value for attendees and encourage donations and participation.
Virtual Summit
Similar to a virtual webinar, a virtual summit is like a conference. Feature multiple hosts to allow for a variety of information spread. These are great ways to help thought leaders increase their reach.
As you can see, virtual and online events are a great way to meet new people and help grow your community. A larger community means more lead generation and connections. It’s important to remember that these events cater to the professional and social aspects of financial advisory. Be sure to take advantage of these events to grow your social network and connect with more potential customers and new leads.
Business growth starts with getting leads. An engaging and targeted content strategy is the secret sauce for turning those interested prospects and referrals into clients. And it’s never been easier with FMG’s engaging landing pages and lead magnets to get prospects to take action.
