The bulk of financial services have moved online – and there’s no reason that this will slow down anytime soon, especially in a post-pandemic age. In this article we are going to discuss why inbound marketing strategies for financial advisors is so crucial to creating long term success.
Leads generated from SEO close at an average of 15% which is 12% higher than the conversion rate for outbound leads. In a recent survey by Hubspot only 9% of businesses using inbound marketing with SEO failed to see an ROI. If it works for 91% or businesses, it is very likely to work for you too.
In a business environment that thrives on word-of-mouth and positive customer experience, it’s easy to question the long-term value that a digital strategy would bring. Let’s break down the key differentiators between inbound digital marketing and traditional outbound marketing. After that, we’d look at 4 inbound marketing strategies for Financial Advisors.
The difference between outbound and inbound marketing
• Traditional outbound marketing is where the business actively reaches ”out” to the potential client. This includes cold calls, email spam, direct mail, TV ads, radio ads, billboards, print advertisements (newspaper ads, magazine ads, etc.), outbound sales calls (AKA “cold calls”).
Note: The financial advisor that does nothing but outbound marketing will never be able to generate business without attaching his or her time, effort, and money. Business growth will always be limited by physical effort.
Think of outbound marketing as traditional advertising. Some may even use the term ‘interruption marketing’ in conjunction with outbound marketing. It’s unsolicited and unexpected by the receiver and often requires a weighty push and a continuous investment of time and energy on your part.
At the start of an outbound campaign, another negative aspect is that initially there is little to no trust established between you and the prospect.
Can outbound methods work to capitalize and win new clients? Absolutely! But understand that not all prospects are created equal and you may have to jump through a few hoops in the sales process that wouldn’t be necessary with the inbound approach.
• Inbound marketing strategies for financial advisors is where marketing assets are created to attract clients to “come in” and find your business. Once built, inbound marketing assets pull in new clients indefinitely with no further effort required once they are set up.
Examples of inbound marketing strategies for financial advisors include content marketing, blogs, search engine optimization (SEO), social media, infographics, ebooks, case studies, webinars offering value, podcasts, video tutorials,
Although inbound marketing referrals isn’t the only way to grow your business, it’s a very vital component.
Blogging is a leading source of leads and traffic for businesses when they are properly optimized for search. SEO will make sure you blog posts get found and drive traffic.
Inbound Referral Traffic
The marketplace waits for no one and more than likely, the winner of the search results race, will also win the business.
You may recall this familiar quote from the classic 1989 film, Field of Dreams: “If you build it, they will come.” This quote provides insight into inbound marketing. Someone has a need, they are seeking help, they do a quick search – and bang – they find you!
Inbound marketing allows your business to be found by people that are already searching for it.
It attracts your audience with engaging content which is tailored to their wants, needs, and concerns. This is why content marketing is often associated with higher conversion rates; because prospects are already searching for what you have to offer.
Inbound marketing in action:
Let’s say an investor is looking for a financial advisor to help manage his assets. Where does he start? With a quick Google search for something like “financial investment advisor” the prospect will be exposed to numerous options in Google just waiting to receive a click.
The financial advisor who has reached the top spot in the search engines for this keyword would be a perfect candidate for capturing the lead and the business.
Being on the top search results of google for specific keywords isn’t easy and the fact that you’re among the top results means that you are serious and most likely the best expert for the job.
This is how getting ranked on google with great content, just like word of mouth referrals, helps solve the trust issue that clients face when searching for a financial planner.
How Do I Get an Inbound Referral?
Inbound lead generation doesn’t happen overnight. It’s more likely that you’ll have about a 3 to 6 month period of ramp-up time before you start seeing results on a campaign. By delighting your audiences with high-value content, you can be sure that they’ll come back to learn more about what you offer.
Getting them to your site is the first part, but providing an enticing offer that makes them want to submit their information for the lead is the goal. This is why establishing your special offer is so important.
By providing an enticing offer that makes them want to submit their information you will be able to generate leads. Your offer could be a free investment consultation, a highly technical investment analysis, or a gated piece of content, etc).
Either way, you need to explain the value they receive for contacting you. Sell the appointment.
Your offer is your competitive advantage
1) Improve your offer
Your offer is what’s being given to the visitor in exchange for their information. Done right it should motivate the visitor to take action with enough perceived value to get them to do so.
To build an effective offer that will generate leads, you should first identify your value in the industry and construct your offer in a way that communicates your value.
The offer will be presented on a landing page or home page that is optimized to encourage prospects to take action or fill out a form so you can collect the lead. Visitors need to understand the value in it for them.
An example of an offer would be a free portfolio evaluation or a free consultation and can be presented anywhere on your website.
2) A/B testing of your landing page offer
After we work with you to construct the perfect offer, we’ll test and measure a variety of landing pages to obtain the highest conversion to lead rates.
We’ll test a variety of different copies, images, videos, infographics, case studies, and social proof and use A/B traffic testing to determine which types of text, information, and media perform best.
This is is a crucial step because later in the process we’ll be driving traffic to these landing pages. We need to be sure that they are performing as well as possible.
A/B testing of landing pages can do wonders for lead generation rates. It’s not a rare occurrence to see improvements between 100%-300% in conversion rates from just this one step.
3) Audit website traffic from online assets; direct visitors to your offer
When a visitor discovers your business through your website, blog, or social media accounts, we track this data to know where the traffic is coming from and which traffic flows have the highest lead conversion rates. This is very important data moving into the future.
To start, we conduct an audit to find where the majority of your online traffic is coming from. We set up tracking on everything to assess traffic flow towards your website.
- Email Marketing: Measure traffic and click-through rate from each email campaign.
- Social Media: From your social media profiles.
Blog Posts: From your blog posts and web pages highest-performing blog posts.
Links: From external links are providing the most traffic to your site
We track traffic flow, click-through rates, and lead generation, by tracking the data we learn where leads are coming from and which channels are performing best
4) Develop SEO strategy
After we’ve measured the current state of your website traffic and current keyword optimization, we build an SEO and keyword strategy that targets the most pertinent areas.
We gain special insight on keywords by doing a second follow up audit on your website focused on cost to benefits ratios of different keyword to target so we can isolate the most advantagous keywords.
We then go in and make the onsite and offsite changes needed to rank for these keywords and then report to you the projected and then the actual traffic gains and new rankings for chosen keyword focus. This is why inbound marketing strategies for financial advisors is so important.
