Does Marketing Stress You Out?

Inbound marketing can be one of the most valuable ways for financial advisors to generate leads and convert new clients. But who has time to be an awesome financial advisor and a master of marketing? You know you need to do it, but you can't do it all!

In this month's FinPlan Friday conversation, Covisum's VP of Sales and Marketing steps in for Joe to highlight what's most important for financial advisors when it comes to inbound marketing.

FinPlan Fridays

In our video blog series, FinPlan Fridays, Covisum® Founder, and President Joe Elsasser, CFP®, typically offers his take on the issues financial advisors see every day. This week, Katie Godbout, our VP of Sales and Marketing steps in with her marketing expertise. Join us on the first Friday of every month for FinPlan Fridays and get helpful tips to grow your financial planning practice. 

Transcript

Hi there! If you don’t know me, I’m Katie Godbout, VP of Sales and Marketing for Covisum. I’m filling in for Joe today for FinPlan Friday – everyone needs a vacation sometimes! 

Today, we’re going to talk about marketing. Financial advisory firms need new clients to sustain and grow their practice, and today, we’re going to hit on five inbound marketing tactics that you can implement to help you succeed.

1. Set Goals and Commit to Them

Ok, let’s get started. The number one thing you need to do to be successful is identifying your goal. You can’t achieve a goal that hasn’t been defined, so it’s critical to be specific here. Write down the goal. Spend time on it. It’s worth it.

Make sure your lead gen goal ties into your overall business goals. And make sure achieving it will help you achieve your revenue goal (or customer acquisition goal, or whatever your number one most important thing to accomplish for your business is).

 Here are some examples of goals you might have:

• Achieve $# in annual company revenue through cohesive sales and marketing efforts
• Achieve # of clients resulting in $# in revenue.
• Establish myself as an expert in retirement income planning and attract #% more qualified prospects.

So, you’ve got your goal. Now what? 

2. Prove You Are an Expert

How? Create and share free educational resources to demonstrate expertise, build trust, and motivate prospects to start a conversation with you.

What are some examples? Think about providing live and on-demand webinars. Keep these short and sweet while delivering high impact. You can always do a video series to keep the content consumable.  

You can also provide consumer retirement income guides and checklists available for download. And it helps to have fresh, relevant content on your website. Think about using a combination of written and video content.

3. Share Your Expertise

Now that you’ve got some high-value content, you need to let people know about it. Make sure you’ve got your webinars, on-demand videos, guides, checklists, and other downloads posted on your website. Check out our tips on local SEO to make sure that your prospects can find you when they are looking. After you update your website, head on over to your social media platforms and share links back to your content there. If you send an email newsletter, link to your content there too.

4. Capture Leads

The only way to add value to your business using the first three tips I’ve mentioned is to capture the leads. Unknown visitors are impossible to court. You cannot follow up with a ghost. You need to know who is interested in your content. And it’s easier than you might think. You can qualify all the leads that come in from sharing your expertise by gating the content on your website. What’s this look like in practice?

1. Create high-value content, like a “taxes in retirement” webinar
2. Post the content on your website on a landing page
3. Create an online form that visitors must submit before gaining access to the landing page

5. Follow Up with Leads and Nurture Them

Think about leads like you would think about a client’s money–or your own, for that matter.

Leads equal money.

Think of a person out in the world who would be a good fit with your financial planning practice as a $1 bill. Now, think of a person who has filled out a form on your website as a $100 bill. You have some choices here.

• Save it (put your leads on a list and do nothing)
• Invest it (or, in this case, invest IN your leads)

You wouldn’t tell your clients to keep their retirement funds under their mattress, would you? Keeping leads on a list and doing nothing with them is the same thing. The money is there, but it doesn’t do much. You can’t grow when you hold on to something.

Once you capture someone’s contact information on a form, you follow up… and keep following up. Take the time to build personalized email campaigns and tailor your messaging to their specific circumstances or areas of need. Your attention to leads will help you build trust, and trust builds business.

Covisum Can Help

We understand that being a financial advisor is hard, so we make it easier. Our marketing resources help you attract new clients. Our software enables you to optimize your clients’ retirement strategies and communicate the value of your advice. And our expert customer experience team supports you along the way, helping you continuously show your value to clients. Subscribe to Covisum software, and we’re giving you the templates and tools to get you started with inbound marketing, delivering on the promises you make to prospects, and helping you sound like an expert along the way.