Digital Marketing for Financial Advisors
You’ve heard it a thousand times - digital marketing for financial advisors. Perhaps you actively engage on social media, or you've paid marketing consultants to help, or tried lead-gen services and “advisor matching” websites. What have you had the most success with?
Let’s face it, digital marketing is a necessary part of the future of client acquisition for financial advisors, but it's a challenge for most advisors.
Marketing Strategy for Financial Advisors in 2023
Let’s dive in. First, it’s a good idea to help you understand why it’s so important. If you already understand why, you can skip ahead.
We spend so much of our lives online today. In 2020, the average person spent 2 hours and 24 minutes on social media every day!
Nearly 50% of prospects removed advisors from consideration based on what they saw or couldn’t find in their digital footprints.
72% of consumers said that online information is extremely or very influential when determining who they hire as their financial advisor.
Cold calling annoys prospects, isn’t effective, and changes the way people think about you. In fact, only 2% of cold calls resulted in any appointment.
Now that we've covered the basics, it’s time to help you jumpstart your digital marketing strategy without spending thousands of dollars or hundreds of hours doing so.
Let’s build your first digital marketing funnel in a few easy steps!
Top of the funnel: this is where you are creating awareness, telling people you exist, and sharing value!
🌪️ You must lay the foundation before closing prospects.
1. Choose your online platforms wisely by understanding: “Who is my ideal client? Where do they work and what do they do? What do they read, where do they read, and how do they read?”
2. By identifying their psychographics, interests, and online behavior you can decide which marketing mediums and messaging to use.
3. Many financial advisors only use LinkedIn, but we suggest to use Meta/Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter if it’s compliant with your firm.
4. The goals here are to create and share content that is easily consumable, interesting but educational, and value-adding.
There are two pitfalls you want to avoid: coming off too salesy, and only interacting with other financial advisors on social media. Break out of the echo chamber. Also, people can tell if you're posting the same cookie-cutter content that every FA receives from the large marketing firms.
Tip: think about the problems that your ideal client has and write content about those exact problems!
You know your audience best.
Middle:
People are aware that you exist, understand the solutions you provide, and begin interacting with you or your content.
1. The goal here is to convince the individual that you are the right person for them to meet.
They’re likely in another advisors funnel too, so you need to standout amongst the crowd. This is where your website, 3rd party profiles, and content can help you out!
2. Your website needs to show who you are, what you do, and what problems you solve for people.
If your website is hard to navigate or isn’t designed well, that’s a problem which needs to be fixed. (See here for tips on how financial advisors can design a better website)
3. Third-party information has become crucial to consumer decision-making. How are you conveying credibility & trust online? In fact, 97% of consumers use “online media when researching products or services”. This is something to take seriously!
4. For content, you can begin to push webinars and newsletters to individuals that are in this stage of the funnel. Reading a newsletter or attending a webinar requires commitment, which is key!
Bottom of the funnel:
The excitement begins! ✨Individuals in this stage are becoming prospects. They are ready to make a decision about working with you.
1. For content, you need to publish and share pieces that specifically articulate the value that you and your firm provide.
Tip: use quick videos to add value to your content!
2. You can begin sharing things like what makes you different, your unique story to becoming a financial advisor, and more.
3. You should have specific call-to-actions that allow prospects to schedule a time to meet with you.
Now you have the knowledge to build your own digital funnel and jumpstart your digital marketing strategy for 2023.
“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”
Make a solid plan and stick with it.
If this sounds like a lot of work, there are plenty of people who can help. As you may know, there are digital marketing agencies and content marketing agencies specifically for financial advisors, although they aren’t cheap.
If you’re looking for a cost-effective way to skip the entire funnel process and have prospects find you online, then join AdvisorFinder today! Our beta program begins in November.
AdvisorFinder's team of experts provides marketing consultations starting at $100 per hour. We specialize in Search Engine Optimization, Website Audits, Analytics, Digital Marketing Campaigns, Google Business Page, and much more.
Bonus: Create a Content Calendar
Committing to a regular cadence of posting on your chosen social media is very important.
Taking the time now to plan out your posts for 2023 would be very beneficial. For example, what holidays will you post about? What significant financial events are worth posting about? Tax season is the the same time every year. What content can you write to prepare your clients for April?
Try devoting one hour per week to these efforts. It will pay dividends for your online presence over the next 6 months.
If you implement some of these strategies into your practice, please share your success with us!
Tag us on socials; we will engage with you and we look forward to seeing your continued growth.
