First, you need a whole stack of sales funnels.
Second, you need good SEO for things like ‘retirement calculators’, ‘investing offshore’ and ‘savin’ like a maven’.
Third, have a website that speaks to the products you sell with a free-book-in-exchange-for-an-email… then you’re good to go. Pictures of people signing pages and shaking hands are also helpful. Also – some shiny glass buildings.
Fourth, ignore points 1-3.
Here’s why: people don’t use google to find a financial adviser; they ask their friends.
If you have a fairly unique product that people will google, then points 1-3 are great strategies. If you’re Discovery, Old Mutual or Allan Gray, these are good strategies. (In fact, even the product providers are starting to move away from these strategies).
But, if you are at the centre of your value-proposition, then this type of marketing will cost you money that you don’t need to spend and energy you could rather be directing towards yourself and your clients.
I recently ran a poll to find out how people in my network choose a professional service provider, like a financial adviser, tax consultant or attorney: 85% said they would rely more heavily on recommendations than choosing from a list or picking the first one they find.
With this in mind, consider what your current strategy looks like.
First: Traditional marketing will assure you that people will find your website if you have the right keywords on a random Google search (SEO). As a financial adviser, this is highly unlikely. You’re competing with Discovery, Old Mutual, Allan Gray and all the other product houses to whom you are licensed.
Here’s what you want: you want your current clients to recommend you to their friends and family so that people will google YOU. Not what you do. Now, go and google your name and see how easy it is for prospects, who have been recommended to you, to find you. This is where you want your website, blogs and social media profile to come up within the top five results. If you don’t have all of those, chat to someone who can help you set it up (check out www.contatto.co.za).
Second: Traditional marketing will tell you to create videos, books and other marketing tools to lure clients into clicking and giving you their emails. Again, when it comes to choosing a financial adviser, this is not necessarily a good marketing tool. It’s great for helping current clients and facilitating your planning process; but for attracting new business, it’s not a good tool for broad-segment marketing.
Here’s what you want: short, personable, authentic, vulnerable bits of content. These can be LinkedIn posts, 2-minute video clips, blogs or personalised newsletters. You can deliver these through your website (blogs), email campaigns, social media or messaging platforms (like WhatsApp). Each of these should have a SUPER QUICK AND EASY call to action that is literally – click here to email me/whatsapp me/call me and let’s chat. No hoops, no loops, no time-wasting.
And – they need to be consistently fresh.
Third: Traditional marketing will talk about building new connections to make more sales. It will talk about pipelines and funnels, Google AdWords, Facebook pages and insta-campaigns.
Here’s what you want: a sustainable communication strategy that keeps you in touch with your clients.
For sustainable marketing for financial planners, I believe the value lies in nurturing current relationships to leverage recommendations. This is PR. It’s creating a different kind of pipeline; one that takes your prospect on a journey of getting to know you, choosing to like you and placing their trust in you. (Know… Like… Trust).
If most people will find you because their friends or family referred them to you, doesn’t it make sense that you need help your clients talk about you more? Our whole communication strategy for financial advisers (Contatto) leverages this exact premise: stay in touch with your clients with conversational content that they can share in their networks for influence.
