Digital Marketing for Financial Advisors - Prospecting is Dead

Financial Advisor Marketing -Then and Now

What's old as dirt?

The way financial advisors market themselves and pirating.

It's an odd thing really.

Prospecting is just as old as Pirating. It used to work a lot better then it does today. The funny thing is that even pirates have evolved in how they do their thing.

Financial advisors are still being taught to:

• Write up their "project 200" of friends and family
• Get a list from the local chamber of business, over even worse, buy lists of leads
• Cold call all of these people, usually at night
• Place newspaper ads
• Conduct in-person seminars (BTW - that model died in 2020 with COVID-19)
• Go to networking events
• Business canvas "walk & talks"

In the past these strategies and tactics actually worked pretty well. Heck, I started off in the industry in 2006 doing these things and did OK. But, doing these things will take a part of your soul in the process and certainly are not scalable or even preferable for most of us.

What I have learned is that there are much better ways for financial advisors to tell their story and drive in new clients in the digital world we live in today.

Digital Marketing Theory

Given we are 20+ years into the digital age the theory of digital marketing has been proved beyond a doubt.

The secret to any marketing strategy is to simply go where people are and then be present. Don't worry, I will elaborate on this.

• Billions of people are on social media. Heck, over 720 million people are on LinkedIn alone.
• Google processes over 3.5 billion searches a day.
• YouTube has over 2 billion monthly active users.

In other words, people are online.

People are not as prone to pick up the phone, especially when we cold call them. People are not looking in the Yellow Pages. People are not looking in the Newspaper.

People are online, so you should be too.

Oh yeah, digital marketing is so much more scalable than the old prospecting methods. Digital marketing done right helps you grow faster, saves you time and even money, and lets you keep that part of your soul that prospecting takes from you.

Digital Marketing Strategies for Financial Advisors

So what can and should you do to maximize being online?

Here is a foundational list of things I suggest advisors do to get their piece of the digital pie:

1. Have a corporate website, and not one from 2000. Your corporate website should be clean, crisp, consistent, and speak to your ideal client, not the masses. It should list What you do, Who you are, Whom you serve, and please LIST YOUR PRICES.
2. A blogging/educational website. People are looking for answers to questions they are thinking about, why not enter that conversation with your content? You can add eBooks, Webinars, etc. as part of your content to this site.
3. Email marketing. Time and time again email marketing continues to be one of the best ways to nurture your potential clients with great content.
4. Social media. Be there or be square. And don't just have some bland profile that does nothing but list your disclosures. I can hear it now, "but my compliance won't let me." Nonsense! Yes, compliance has their rules and guidelines which you should respect, but there is a ton of room to play here folks. Learn what is allowed, push back on antiquated rules, and maximize what you can do.

Now that you know the strategies needed at a minimum let's look at the tactics that will exponentially grow your reach and ultimately sales.

Digital Marketing Tactics for Financial Advisors

We can sum up all tactics in one word. Create.

If you don't create then you will be lumped into the Creeper/Prospector category.

So the first step is for you to start creating content that others will find of value. This can come in the form of:

• Blog posts
• Videos
• Social media posts
• eBooks
• Webinars
• Etc.

How do you know what do create content around? The two best ways I have found are by utilizing Google Keyword Planner and listening to your clients and community for what they are asking about.

Here is a great example. The article you are reading right now is something I curated after using the two strategies above. I know advisors are searching for "digital marketing for financial advisors" and I also continue to listen to what advisors need help with. And knowing how LinkedIn works with articles I know that this article will be indexed by Google so people searching for it will find it.

The second step is to engage. Once you create content, especially on social media sites, it is very important that you engage with those that engage with your content. If someone comments on your content, thank them and respond. Remember, this is a place to have conversations. Great conversations are not one-sided.

A tip for this is that I literally have a separate Chrome tab open to LinkedIn all day as I am sitting at my desk. This way I can keep tabs (pun intended, lol) on the "conversation" and stay engaged as my day permits.

The third step, simply repeat steps 1 and 2.

You must stay actively engaged. Just like the old cold-calling days, the second you stop dialing is the second your business starts a slow death.

Leave Prospecting to the Pirates - Use Digital Marketing to drive in leads

We all of heard of this thing called evolution.

We can't fight it. We can try to ignore it but it still happens.

Instead we must embrace it.

Technology has and will continue to evolve exponentially. The technological evolution has led to a human evolution.

People want our services but the way they want it has changed.

If you embrace digital marketing, leaving prospecting to the pirates, you will now have positioned yourself to be exactly what your clients want you to be.

I leave you with a question.

If the rest of the world has evolved and made it clear what they want and how they want it, why are you still using your elevator pitch, in an elevator?

If you are going to evolve then if not now, when?

OK, that's two questions, but you get the point!

2021 is almost here, time to work ON your business.

Happy Holidays to you all my friends, thanks for reading!

Warm Regards,

Derek Notman