Lead generation is essential to a financial advisor’s business, but it’s time-consuming. Every hour spent on Internet marketing for financial advisors – crafting emails, writing blog articles, reviewing your website and nurturing leads – is an hour not spent doing the work that makes you and your business money. Your focus should be on producing revenue through product sales and strategy. After all, you’re not a marketer, you’re a financial advisor. Your skillset is needed once someone walks in the door, not getting them to the door.
That’s why outsourcing your financial advisor marketing needs is crucial.
If you’re still not convinced, and can’t justify the upfront cost, which can save you thousands of dollars in the long run, here are 6 questions you should ask yourself.
1. What am I doing right now to generate leads?
Are you still using outdated Outbound Marketing strategies, like cold calls and snail mail? These strategies no longer work.
The Internet has changed the way investors research and hire financial advisors. Investors don’t want to talk to you and hear your pushy sales call during dinner. Most likely, they immediately throw away your expensive marketing materials with the other junk mail they receive. Instead, they’re heading online to research advisors and find someone who meets their needs.
If you’re still practicing 90s marketing techniques, it’s time to get professional help to get you on the right track. The right marketing firm can build you a modern day website that is interactive and compelling. A firm can establish benchmarks and goals to hit. An expert marketing team can expand – or start from scratch – your digital footprint, including a social media presence.
2. When was the last time I received an organic lead?
When used properly, the Internet can make it easier to identify qualified leads and turn them into clients through a process called Inbound Marketing. Early Inbound Marketing users are already seeing results with increased business growth and less time wasted trying to track down and convert potential clients. But while Inbound Marketing has the potential to revolutionize the way you grow your business, it requires a fair amount of expertise to do it right.
Inbound Marketing is a technique for sourcing customers through content marketing, which uses search engine optimized online content such as blog posts, videos and social media posts to connect potential customers with your business and brand. Instead of relying on cold calling for hours on end or sending mass emails and snail mail brochures to thousands of prospects each day, Inbound Marketing brings your customers to you.
For decades, financial advisors have used Outbound Marketing via cold calling and mail to initiate contact with investors. The very nature of Outbound Marketing makes it costly and time-consuming with little to no return on your investment. At the same time, it can be emotionally exhausting to the point where many advisors leave the industry after burning out on attempting to contact people who don’t want to be reached.
As Outbound Marketing has become increasingly inefficient and difficult with investors using caller ID and spam filters to avoid unwanted solicitations, more and more RIAs are transitioning from Outbound Marketing to Inbound Marketing. Inbound Marketing turns customer-sourcing on its head by letting potential clients come to you rather than you having to hunt down potential clients.
Inbound Marketing is so effective because it uses what people are already searching for to direct potential customers to you. It’s an investor-centric process by which Search Engine Optimization helps investors find your website when they’re looking for relevant information.
Since Inbound visitors are connected to your website when your site matches their search query, they’re more likely to view you as a solution to their problem rather than a solicitor offering a service they don’t think they need. This makes them more qualified leads than those generated in Outbound Marketing techniques and it becomes much easier to turn them into customers. They were already looking for you; they just didn’t know it until your site came up in the search results.
3. How much time am I currently spending on marketing efforts?
Despite the power of Inbound Marketing, research shows that only 14% of financial advisors feel they have an effective Inbound Marketing strategy that contributes to the growth of their business. This is no surprise considering how difficult creating an effective Inbound Marketing strategy is.
Creating an effective Inbound Marketing strategy needs a great deal of expertise, and trying to handle Inbound Marketing internally gets difficult quickly. For instance, you’d need a firm grasp of Search Engine Optimization practices to rank highly in search engine queries. Research shows less than 5% of advisors generate significant investor traffic to their website.
4. Do I want to write another article this week? Do I really have time?
Quality content doesn’t stay relevant for long. Especially in the financial services space where RIAs face the additional risk of compliance and credibility issues if their websites become out-of-date. Regularly researching, designing, writing, optimizing, publishing and distributing relevant and timely content is a huge time commitment and can be costly to procure.
Before you can even begin creating content, you need a content strategy that details the type of content (such as blog posts, white papers, eBooks, videos and other shareable media) you’ll create and when you’ll distribute it. Then you need a separate refresh plan for how you’ll keep your content up-to-date.
5. Do I have time to stay up-to-date on marketing trends?
The Inbound Marketing field is rapidly changing. It’s constantly evolving as Google and other search engines change their ranking metrics and users change their search behaviors. When you’re already busy running your business as an RIA, finding time to effectively market yourself and your firm can be nearly impossible.
Rather than spending your valuable time learning about, implementing and perfecting an Inbound Marketing strategy, it makes sense to outsource it to experts who specialize in your industry.
Inbound Marketing experts have entire teams of trained and experienced writers who can effectively communicate your brand’s story to potential clients. They know how to create content that’s relevant, on-brand and search engine optimized so prospects can find you. They also know how to provide a fair exchange of value that will induce website visitors to willingly provide their contact information.
Experts who specialize in the RIA business are equipped to understand and address your unique business needs. They understand how investors use the Internet to find advisors so they can target your ideal clients and create a strategy that will bring them to your website and ultimately your book of business.
Inbound Marketing experts can leverage technology to get the right message to the right people at the right time so leads become clients without you needing to lift a finger. They can do the legwork of drawing in and nurturing qualified leads without you needing to worry about a thing.
With a team of hard-working professionals who can and will concentrate on keeping your Inbound Marketing strategy running at full speed, you and your team can focus on doing the work that generates revenue for your business.
Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.