Four Pillars of Digital Marketing for Financial Advisors

It’s no small decision, the choice of which financial planner to use . Not only are your perspective clients counting on your expertise to lead them through to retirement, but they’ll have to share their financial secrets, mistakes, regrets, and fears with you. One advisor described it as being akin to asking them “to get naked” in front of you.With that in mind, it’s easy to understand why digital marketing for financial advisors is more challenging then for many other industries – the barrier of “trust” is high. Setting up a website, posting a couple of generic blog articles, or spending a few minutes a day on Facebook, is not likely going to “get the phone ringing,” not consistently anyway.Instead, while the details of your online marketing campaign may vary, you’ll ultimately need to successfully develop these 4 components of digital marketing to to consistently generate leads.1. Website: your website is the “hub” to your marketing efforts. It is where you should direct traffic that shows interest in you, your services, or your content. Your website should look professional, be user friendly, and engage your visitors.2. Traffic Generation: Traffic streams are the “spokes” to your website “hub.” Without traffic, it doesn’t matter how “great” your website is. Traffic can be generated through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) , Content Marketing , Social Media Marketing , Paid Advertising , or Off-line marketing (face-to-face networking, direct marketing, speaking, etc), or a combination of these different funnels.Related: Why Advisors Should Include Pricing Information on their Website 3. Lead Generation: your website must offer a way to “capture” the visitor’s information. Simple calls-to-action like “Sign up for Our Newsletter” or “Contact us Now” are generally not going to work very often, if at all. Instead you need to offer something of value, something that catches their attention and makes them want to engage with you (we call this a lead magnet). In exchange, they will provide you their name and email address so that you can continue to market to them.4. Lead Conversion through Lead Nurturing: It would be great if a visitor landed on your website, read through some of the content, then picked up the phone and called you. However, this is not how it usually works online. The online sales cycle generally takes more time, visitors are likely to incrementally engage with you, starting by signing up for your lead magnet offer. After that, its up to you to stay in touch with them and move them through your funnel with great content or even better offers.Many advisors struggle with online lead generation, but most that we talk to only have one, or at most, two pillars fully implemented. Are you missing any of the pillars in your marketing campaign ? Which do you find most challenging to successfully implement?