3 Steps for Financial Advisors to Skyrocket their Client Base

As a financial advisor, are you generating enough new clients on a consistent basis? Do you have a system to continuously grow your book of business?

If you’re like many financial advisors, you can always have more clients to help generate more revenue for your business. The key to doing this is to set up an automated system that generates leads for you 24 hours a day.

Think about it, you don’t want to spend your extra time trying to find new clients when they could come to you.

In order to get clients knocking on your door, though, you’ll need to implement a strategy that funnels them directly to you. Generally, this means finding a stream of traffic, building interest in your services, and guiding potential clients to contact you.

Let’s take a closer look at the three steps that financial planners can take to generate more clients.

1) Create a consistent online presence

There are many effective offline marketing techniques but, for the purpose of this discussion, we will focus on online methods. In my opinion, internet marketing is be the most powerful and easiest way to drive consistent leads.

So, the first step to grow your financial planning business is to get online. This starts with building a website to showcase your services, either as a firm or individual advisor.

Build a website

Simple websites can be created quickly using free services such as Wix, or Squarespace, if you’re technically inclined. Just sign up for one of these accounts and they will guide you through building a website for your business, including providing free templates.

WordPress is another great platform to build your website on since it is very versatile. With thousands of templates and plugins available, it is possible to create any type of website or blog.

The main things you’ll need are:

• Domain name, which could be something like yourbusinessname.com
• Website hosting, which is where your site files are saved
• Website builder, such as WordPress

If you’re just getting started and don’t currently have a website, it may be easier to hire a web developer to handle everything for you. They will be able to take care of all the technical details for you to simplify the process.

One thing to note, not all web developers are able to create an effective website. Sure, there are plenty of people who can put together a site for a couple hundred dollars, but they probably won’t be able to optimize it for results.

When you’re working with your developer, make sure they understand how to best optimize click through rates, optins, and phone calls from your website. They should be able to use hard data to tweak its performance to get the results you need. If they aren’t able to optimize your website’s performance, you may want to look for a different developer.

Get on Facebook

Your website should be your primary online real estate but then you’ll need to start creating a larger footprint. Facebook is an excellent platform for reaching new people and communicating with your current clients.

They key to using Facebook is to set up a business Facebook Page that you can use specifically for financial advising. Don’t try to use your own personal page for your business so you can keep it separate from your clients.

Here are a few tips on how to set up a Business Facebook Page.

Once you have a Facebook page based around your financial planning services, use that platform to interact with your clients. You can reach out to them through Facebook Messenger and invite them to like your Page.

The goal really is just to provide another platform where clients can connect with you and gain trust in your services.

Set up your local listings

After you have your primary communications channels up and running, you’ll want to keep expanding your online presence. This will make it easier for people to find you organically when they are searching Google.

An excellent way to do this is to claim as many local listings as you can, starting with your Google listing. You’ll need to submit basic information about your company and verify them but then you’ll show up in search results.

After that, create listings for Yelp, Yellow Pages, and other directories related to the financial planning niche. This will improve your organic rankings and help drive traffic to your main website.

As you’re creating these profiles, it is very important to use the same Name, Address, and Phone (NAP) on every listing. If you use a different phone number or address, the search engines will not recognize that you are the same business and it will be harder to rank high.

You should also include a link to your website and social media pages, especially in any bio sections. When people find your listing on a local directory, they will then follow it to your website to learn more.

Use similar branding

As you build out your online presence, think about how your business is portrayed. This should include using a recognizable logo and colors across multiple platforms.

For example, pick one or two primary colors in your logo and incorporate them into the rest of your website. Use those same colors and logo on your Facebook Page and other local directories.

Branding can also be extended to the pictures you use and the overall “feel” of the content you produce. Think about the types of photos you use, color palettes, and filters that can give a certain impression.

McDonalds is a great example of how using color can be turned into a recognizable brand. If you were to see an ad for a fast food restaurant and it had no information other than red and gold, who would you think of? McDonalds! You can do the same for financial planning so people automatically associate you to certain aspects of your branding.

2) Become an authority

After you have an online presence, you should start building your reputation as an authority in the financial planning niche. Positioning yourself as the go-to expert and you’ll get potential clients to trust your advice and services.

Create unique content

An excellent way to start is to create a blog and share free financial advice. This helps to build a relationship with potential clients and educates them about how you can make their investing easier.

Start off by publishing a new article once or twice a week where you give some advice for specific target audiences. Talk about what people looking to retire in the next couple of years should be doing to get ready. Or how recently married couples should be investing to set their families up for financial success.

If you’re willing to be on camera, creating videos is an excellent way to connect with your audience before they even meet you. Sharing advice through short videos will capture visitors attention and help make them trust you.

Whenever possible, change up the types of posts you create on social media and your blog to give some variety. You can write in-depth articles, shorter comparison posts, videos, pictures, and even podcasts. Give your visitors a change in pace every so often and they will stay more engaged.

To get maximum exposure, post your articles and videos directly on your website and then share it on your social media pages. This will help with your search engine optimization and create links back to your content to drive traffic to your offer.

The other key is consistency in your posting. The more quality content that you create, the more authority you will gain in your field. If you can try to post twice per week for an entire year, you’ll have over 100 new posts that will help with branding you as an expert.

Partner with others

One way to become an authority in your field is to work with other people that can help to position you as an expert. This can be done by being featured on other websites in interviews or writing a guest post for other blogs.

One idea could be for financial advisors to partner with a local life insurance agent to target people who are looking to plan for their future. Have the insurance agency interview you in a short video and then they can send out the link in their next newsletter to their clients. In return, you can refer your clients to that insurance agent.

If you have an opportunity to speak at a conference, try to get a video of it to post on your social media. If you can’t get the video, you could share the Powerpoint presentation or a cheat sheet summary of what you discussed. Take advantage of the publicity from speaking events to share on your own website and social media pages.

Share your knowledge

If you have even a few years of experience as a financial advisor, you will have a wealth of knowledge that you can share with others. Besides creating content for your blog, consider how else you can educate others.

One idea is to write an article for a magazine or publication to get your name out there. Target potential clients by writing a light-hearted article in the local newspaper or related magazine to gain exposure.

To become recognized in your field, consider writing a thought-piece in a professional journal. Attend financial planning conferences and symposiums and volunteer to present. When you do this, don’t forget to share the link on your website or social media pages so other people can see your contributions.

3) Make visitors take action

At this point, you should have a solid online presence with a website, social media profiles, and local directory listings. A good test of this coverage is to Google your business name and see what comes up.

If your website and phone number show up towards the top of the results, you’re in good shape. If not, you may want to keep working to build your web presence.

You should also have built a credible brand where people will trust you as a financial planner. With this infrastructure in place, you need to guide your visitors to contact you.

So, what’s your ultimate goal? To have visitors express interest in your services, give you their contact information, and eventually sign up for your financial services.

Educate your visitors

The first step in funneling your visitors towards becoming a client is to provide general education. This can be as simple as sharing a nugget of information on your blog or giving away a guide on how to plan for the financial future.

By providing some educational content, visitors will start to trust you and build a relationship with you. They likely will not sign up right away, but they’ll be much more likely next time they see your offer.

In this phase of the funnel, you don’t need to be overly salesy and don’t try to push your services too much. Provide a link, in case they are interested in help, but don’t worry about offering too much of a Call to Action.

Trade value for contact information

The next step is to get your visitors to give you their contact information, usually their email or phone number. To do this, you generally will need to give them something of value, such as a free report or analysis.

As a financial planner, you could create a cheat sheet on how to invest for retirement. Or you could create a quiz to show how financially mature someone is. Or offer to review their financial performance to date and provide free advice on planning for the near future.

Whatever you choose, look to help your visitors as much as possible and then trade that value for contact information.

Build a real relationship

Most people don’t make significant decisions on a whim. They require multiple interactions before deciding to make a purchase and choosing a financial advisor is no different.

Once you have visitors who have agreed to joining your mailing list, follow up with them regularly to provide value. Send them your blog posts, share news on your social media pages, and give them access to your inner circle.

As they see you more online and become familiar with your style and level of knowledge, they will become more confident in you.

Ask for the sale

At this point, you should have funneled cold visitors to your website, educated them, and built a relationship with them. There should now be several people who are actively interested in signing up for your financial planning services.

Some of those people will reach out to see what the next steps are for investing with you.

Others will need more of a nudge to take the plunge. At this point in the sales funnel, you should ask them directly to come on board as a client.

If, for some reason, they are not ready, simply continue to educate and build a relationship with them until they are ready. If they decide to move on to another advisor, don’t spend time worrying about it and just keep working.

Automate your financial advisor lead funnel

Now the question is, where are you on your journey to creating an automated sales funnel for your financial planning firm? Once you have built out this framework and started to drive targeted traffic, it is possible to generate qualified leads on autopilot.

Building a strong brand takes time and effort but funneling leads to you is much easier than cold prospecting.

Need some help in getting started with generating pre-qualified leads? Get in touch with the Growth Launcher team today.