Hubspot recently reported that website traffic overall is up 13% across over 70,000 businesses that it has access to monitor the data for. Facebook reported that visits to its platform were up 27% over the last 30 days and YouTube reported site traffic up 15%. I think it's because we're all staying home and we're all online a lot more. It's also why I'm recording this video from my car to escape my two young children. I hope everybody's doing well. I'm Samantha Russell from Twenty Over Ten, and with all of us online more than ever right now, I wanted to share three reasons why your website is not generating new leads, new business. So let's dive right in.
Reason #1- Poorly Written Website Copy
The first reason why I see so many financial advisory firm sites not converting is because the website copy is written very poorly and speaks to no one. You want to write your copy to be what we call problem-solution based. So what is the problem that your particular audience has and what are the solutions that your firm provides to that problem? This is a lot lot easier to do if you have a particular niche, right? If you don't have a niche, it's going to be hard to really hone in on particular problems. So identify your niche and then rewrite the copy on your homepage, your about page and any of your contact pages or start here pages to be problem- solution based. That's because those are the most visited website pages of any advisory firm's site - home page, about our team or contact page.
Reason #2- You Don't Have Calendar Links
The next thing you want to do is have a calendar link added to every page of your website. So the second most popular reason we see people not generating leads is simple. They don't have a calendar widget. This seems too good to be true. But a survey we did last year in 2019 found that those advisory firms that are generating the most new prospects for the firm have a calendar link right on their website embedded. And this makes sense right. People don't want to have to fill out a form or send you a long-winded email. If they're interested in learning more, they just want to go ahead get booked on your calendar. And then when that date and time rolls around, they can have their list of questions ready to go ahead and start exploring the conversation. So whether you use Calendly, Acuity, I'll link to a couple of different scheduling apps that we recommend below. Get one set up and start using it.
Reason #3- You Don't Get Qualified Visitors
Okay, the third reason that most firms are not generating new leads simply comes down to not having qualified traffic visiting their site. So the average financial advisor firm's getting about three hundred site visitors a month. The total number of visitors you're getting honestly matters way less to me than how many of those visitors are qualified - how many of them are a good fit to work with your firm? So that's what we care about more right - quality visitors not just the total number. For instance, if your licensed to do business only in the United States and you have a ton of traffic from Europe that doesn't do anything for you. Or if you specifically focus on working with pre-retirees, people just a few years out from getting started in the retirement journey, and you're getting a ton of traffic from people in their twenties and thirties who are looking for hacks on budgeting that's not going to help you either.
So you want to make sure you have good quality traffic. The two main ways to do that is make sure your site's optimized - its SEO optimized for the keywords or the location in which you want to be found. Again, I'll link in the description into all of our best tips and tricks for SEO optimization, but if you're a Twenty Over Ten customer and you have worked with us, we also will help you set your site up for SEO when you get started. And then the second thing you want to do that's arguably even more important than the first is produce relevant content regularly.
Related: What Investors Are Searching for Amid COVID-19 and the Economic Downturn