With the digital age upon us, the way we communicate with prospects and clients has changed. Gone are the days of mailing newsletters and holiday cards; in their place, an infinite number of ways to connect and engage with people by having a online presence. As a financial advisor, your job is to build trust and create relationships with your clients and prospects. To do so, you need to know how people are communicating and what they expect from a professional like you.
Digital marketing for financial advisors starts with a strong website that reflects your brand and presents information about your business — including your work history, investment philosophy, product offerings, and any special offers or promotions you’re currently running. It’s also important to keep the website up-to-date as frequently as possible. Many consumers are turned off by outdated or poorly designed websites — especially if they’re accustomed to high-end design on every other website they visit. Continue reading to find out how you can make a website that will convert visitors into customers.
A strong digital presence can also be achieved through social media engagement on platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. These sites offer you the opportunity not only to connect with current clients but also to attract new ones. With an active presence on each site, you can share relevant company updates or announcements related to the products or services you offer. There are many ways a financial advisor like yourself can start gaining more awareness through digital marketing.
What Is Digital Marketing?
A lot of our time is spent online, whether we are searching for information, shopping, playing games or socializing online with friends and family. The term “Digital Marketing” is defined as “Digital marketing is the act of selling products and services through channels such as social media, SEO, email marketing, and mobile apps. Basically, digital marketing is any form of marketing that involves electronic devices.” by SEO expert Niel Patel.
Let’s take a look at how companies leverage Digital Marketing today.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): SEO is the practice of optimizing a website so it ranks higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) like Google and Bing. For example, if you want to rank for the keyword “SEO” on Google, you would need to use SEO best practices to increase your chances of ranking higher than your competition.
Paid Search: Paid Search advertisements are typically displayed as text links or banner ads alongside organic search results on SERPs. The advertisement may be sponsored by a brand or a company promoting a service, product, or event they believe their target audience would find valuable.
Social Media Marketing: Social Media Marketing uses social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to promote services, products, or events that are valuable to their target audience. Content Marketing: Content marketing is focused on providing valuable content to your target audience instead of selling directly to them.
Website Design: Having a well-designed website is important when creating an effective digital marketing plan. It is important to implement the best user experience to ensure that potential customers do not get discouraged when they are exploring your website.
Now that you have a better understanding of what digital marketing is, and some common categories that fit into the umbrella of digital marketing, let’s take a look at how your financial firm can be involved in these channels.
Build A Website That Converts
Let’s say you have an awesome video on your homepage that explains how you can use compound interest to reach your goals. If people enter their email addresses, they can watch the video. The page should also have a button that takes them to a form where they can download your free guide.
When you perform this method you are able to get their information by just providing them with an awesome video. They get to watch the video for free, but only after they’ve given you their email address by clicking through from the homepage. This is a great way to create a website that does more than just showcase your knowledge.
The website guidefp.com does a great job of having a clear CTA. This will help you generate tons of leads for your business.
Implement an SEO Strategy
Once the website has been set up, it is vital that it is optimized correctly for the search engines. How you set up your site will depend on what kind of content is on your site. If you are a financial advisor, you would want to optimize your site so that when someone searches for “Financial advisor” in Google, your website comes up as one of the top results in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page).
What is SEO?
SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” SEO is the process of making improvements to your site so it shows up in search results when people search for products or services related to your business. The better visibility your pages have in search results, the more likely you are to attract prospective and existing customers to your business.
We will focus on four main categories of SEO that include on-page optimization, local search engine optimization, technical optimization, and backlinks.
On-Page SEO: On-page SEO refers to the actual text and copy of your website content. Optimizing the copy of your website could improve your rankings for specific keywords. Your first step is to do keyword research through Google’s keyword planner tool and start finding keywords that have a good volume that you would like to rank for. Once you have identified a few good keywords for financial advisors, you can start writing content around them.
You will want to focus on long-tail keywords rather than short phrases. These could include the location you are providing a service in. Instead of just trying to rank for a financial advisor, focus on ranking for a financial advisor in Ohio. When writing content you want to focus on 2-3 keywords max per page and write at least 500 words but typically around 1000 is best practice.
Local SEO: The first step in local SEO for a financial advisor is to optimize your Google My Business listing. This includes creating a unique profile page, uploading high-quality photos that help you stand out, and adding a link to your website. Below is a good example of how Libertas wealth management group has added photos, requested reviews, and added information about their business.
Once you’ve completed the basics, it’s time to look at how you can help Google find your site and make it the top choice when someone searches with related keywords. To start off, ensure that all of your business information is correct, including your address and phone number.
To fully take advantage of Google My Business make sure you add all of your services with description of each service. When adding your services keep in mind the keywords that you choose earlier and implement these into your services. Below is a great example of how a martial arts gym has added all of their service but went into detail of adding keywords like “silat in Springfield” to better support their rankings for that keyword.
Next, focus on creating content that’s optimized for both search engines and local customers. According to Search Engine Land, adding a location to your blog posts helps them rank higher on local searches. In addition, having a clear location on each blog post helps searchers find what they’re looking for faster.
When you’re considering which keywords to use in blog posts and other content, think about using long-tail keywords that are more specific to what you offer instead of broad terms that are more general. For example, a public relations firm might use “PR firm” as the main keyword but might also include “PR agency” and “public relations agency.” Learn more about how google local listings can help your business with local seo here.
Technical SEO: Technical SEO is the cornerstone of a successful SEO campaign, and it’s important to develop a good understanding of technical SEO before you start your campaign.
Knowing the right steps to take will help you create a foundation for your SEO strategy that can help your website rank higher in search engines.
Here are the main components of technical SEO:
Sitemaps, a sitemap is a file that helps search engines crawl and index your website pages. It allows search engines to better understand what pages are on your site, which pages are important, and how they should be crawled.
Schema markup, schema markup is code that uses structured data to help search engines understand the content of your website. When it’s properly implemented, schema will help make your content show up in rich snippets and other knowledge panels in the search results.
Schema can also help you collect more data about how people interact with your site.
Site navigation, having a well-designed website navigation structure is critical for many reasons, including performance, usability, and most importantly — helping search engines discover new pages on your website automatically through links from other sites (i.e., establishing link equity).
Site Speeds, having a website that load faster than your competitors could get your website to rank higher. Google has mentioned multiple times that this is a big contributor to website rankings.
Backlinks: For financial advisors, the search engine optimization (SEO) implications of inbound links are pretty obvious. Google and other major search engines want to show users the most relevant search results, so they place a large amount of value on which sites link to yours.
So, how do you get high-quality backlinks?
The best way to get backlinks is by earning them. Let’s say you write an article that’s really useful to a particular niche. Your readers will share it with their friends and followers on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. If you have a great piece of content about financial planning for young adults, for example, your readers might share it with other 20-somethings they know. When those readers click through from their social media profiles to your site, Google notices that they just came from a “high quality” website (in this case Facebook) and that they visited your website after clicking on a link there. This helps your site rank higher in the search results than competing sites that don’t have backlinks from Facebook or other highly reputable sources.
Another great way to get links is to do guest blogs on websites that are related to your niche. For example, if you are a financial advisor you can visis the write for us page of the website personalfinanceanalyst.com to create content for them for exchange of you linking to your own website in the article.
Stay Consistent On Social Media
Having a social media presence is a great way to stay connected with your existing clients, connect with potential new clients, and help brand your business. But if you’re not careful, it can also be a major time suck and completely ineffective.
The key to success on social media is to stay consistent. With so many different platforms, it’s hard to know where to focus your attention. The best approach is to set specific goals for each platform and share valuable information that will help people.
For example, LinkedIn is great for connecting with potential new clients. Facebook is good for reconnecting with old friends and family, sharing industry news, and getting the word out about articles or blog posts you’ve written. Twitter is good for staying up-to-date on industry news, connecting with influencers, and engaging in conversations about topics relevant to your industry.
Put together a social media game plan outlining how you’ll use each platform. Then follow through on that plan consistently. Also, make sure you have someone monitoring each channel throughout the day so you don’t miss any opportunities or important posts from influencers. Social media can help your business by bring awareness to your firm.
Conclusion
As a financial advisor, your success is dependent upon the quality of the information you share with your target audience and how often you interact with them. The more frequently you can engage with prospects and clients and the more detailed that information is, the better chance to be successful with digital marketing.
For financial advisors, digital marketing means more than just having a website or sending out newsletters. It’s about building relationships that lead to new business opportunities. Successful digital marketing for financial services is about providing your target audience with relevant information in an engaging manner.
The most important aspect of digital marketing for financial advisors is creating content that solves problems for your target clients. The goal of this content should be to educate your audience so they are empowered to make better decisions and take action steps on their own without having to contact you directly. This type of article-based content strategy helps establish you as an expert in your field and increases engagement with your brand by pushing readers deeper into the sales funnel through effective messaging and calls-to-action (CTAs).
