Put these powerful ideas in to action and watch your business grow.
Here are few tried and tested lead generation tactics:
Event management
Many advisors are already hosting events to reconnect with existing clients, meet referrals, and meet new prospects. Promoting and managing your event using your website is one more way to save time, money and tons of stress for you and your admin team.
Managing an event online allows you to invite your audience and manage their RSVPs right from your website.
Today, we’re seeing advisors host events virtually via webinar.
Like blogging and other content marketing initiatives, one huge perk of hosting a webinar is the ability to establish yourself as an expert in financial services.
Leading a discussion and providing tips and resources to a live audience is a way to build credibility with your audience in a genuine and authentic manner.
Being seen as an expert in one area of the financial profession will improve your relations with existing clients and prospects building a stronger relationship of trust between you.
Advisors are beginning to host virtual events, also known as webinars.
Leads are generated when your target audience registers for the event. They’ll be required to complete a form that collects (at the very least) their full name and email address. The more narrow the topic of the presentation, the more qualified your participants will be.
Hosting webinars is a great way to collect and grow email lists for future prospecting.
Because the attendees are interested in the information you are presenting, and already engaging with some of your content, webinars have been shown to have higher conversion rates than other forms of web marketing.
Blog
Blogging for business can be one of the most effective lead generating tactics for advisors. A blog provides 3 huge benefits to harness high quality leads online.
Fresh content
Both humans and search engines love fresh content. Websites with a blog generate more traffic and leads.
Because search engines like Google really love the fresh and original content that is published on a blog, websites with a blog regularly rank higher on a search results page. What does that mean for you as an advisor?
Basically, blogging is a great tool to help the people who are looking for you online (ie, potential clients) find you.
Blogging adds pages and content to your website. By blogging you are growing your website to be bigger and attract more attention from google. Inevitably if you are ranked higher in search engine results, the right people will be able to find you.
And as we know, the better your SEO the better your traffic will be. Some quick wins from your blog can be from optimizing your posts with relevant long-tail keywords in your industry. This way the people that are looking for you (high quality leads) can actually find you.
Establish credibility
Financial blogging provides a platform for you to position yourself as an expert in the industry.
Besides the technical side of SEO and creating fresh content for your website, blogging allows financial advisors to connect with their clients and prospects and build a unique rapport that is incredibly cost and time efficient.
Provide Value
It’s not surprising that consumers report that they would rather read an informative article about a topic that interests them, than a sales pitch describing the services you provide. It’s all about building trust and relationships.
Use your blog as a platform where you answer questions that you get asked all the time.
Social Media
LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook are the three social media giants you should focus on. However, in this book we’re going to take a deeper look at LinkedIn and its potential to generate leads, and grow your client base as a financial professional.
LinkedIn is the financial advisors best friend, and it can be so much more than just a digital resume full of your skills and experience. Harness the power of LinkedIn and use it unlike any other social network.
Showcase your digital resume to build credibility online. I know I said LinkedIn isn’t just about your digital resume, but it is a major component of the professional social media giant.
Make sure when you’re found online your profile is optimized to reflect who you really are.
Don’t be shy: showcase your achievements, your education and your skills. Highlight additional qualities that make you a compelling professional, such as charity work, and interests.
People like people who they share common interests with, and the same can be said for clients looking for a financial advisor. Walk the fine line between an excellent professional, but also a real person.
Use LinkedIn to generate leads
Three tips for creating your LinkedIn Ads:
1. Set a budget
2. Craft a compelling ad that invites the user to learn more
3. Collect the leads for you or your sales team to follow up with
E-book & white papers
We can’t emphasize enough on them importance of providing ‘Value’ in your content. Web consumers are savvier than ever. Studies show that consumers are less interested in getting sold to, but by providing information to a targeted audience you can put your name out and generate higher quality leads at the same time.
White papers or online brochures can be one of the best places to gather information from your web traffic. Create a one page informative white paper on a topic you are highly knowledgeable on.
As we previously mentioned, a landing page is one of the most crucial places to convert traffic to leads. By placing your white paper or resource behind a form, your traffic will trade an important piece of their information, their phone number or email, in exchange for the information you offer.
Videos
Video creation goes one step even further than blogging alone; they add a level of engagement nearly impossible to get with text based content. One minute of video is equal to 1.8 million words and 65% of executives visit the marketer’s website after viewing a video.
One question advisors ask most frequently about video content creation is how to come up with ideas to discuss in your videos that will add value for your clients and prospects.
Answer FAQs
How often do you answer questions like these: “How risky is the stock market these days?” or “What’s a fiduciary, anyway?”
We suggest scrolling through your inbox and making a list of questions you receive from clients, prospects, friends, etc. These types of questions create the perfect platform for a 2-3 minute video that provides value and is helpful. It also helps you build credibility and authority with viewers.
Share tips & success stories
People are always looking for free information on how to manage money or save for college/ retirement/emergencies -you name it! A short video clip explaining three ways to save for college could be a perfect place to get started.
Interview people
Getting a fresh take on current events or opinions of your colleagues is refreshing for viewers and requires little effort on your end. Come up with 5-10 simple, open-ended questions and let your guest explain.
No matter how you decide to come up with ideas for video content, one factor should always be a top priority: make sure your video adds value to your target prospects and ideally helps them solve a problem.
Another concern we hear pretty often is coming up with enough content for a lengthy video. In fact, viewers will only stay tuned in for a few minutes, tops-so keep it short! Two to three minutes is plenty of time to educate viewers without boring them.
These tips should help you become more effective in generating leads online.
Click here to download the whitepaper.
This is the second and concluding part of the article.
