Fee-Only Financial Advisors...Always Doing Your Best

(4th and final part of ‘The Four Agreements’ series) This is the fourth agreement that connects Inbound Marketing methodology and Fee-Only Financial Advisors. Believe me - there?are?financial advisor marketing solutions in this post so read on…

Don Miguel Ruiz published?‘The Four Agreements’?in 1997 and it became a best-seller soon after. You don’t even have to read the book in order for it to have an impact on how you think.

Here are the four agreements:

1. Be impeccable with your word
2. Don’t take things personally
3. Don’t make assumptions
4. Always do your best

Let’s assume you always do your best in the role of Fee-only Financial Advisor.?However?are you doing your best to grow your business??

We always do our best don’t we? Maybe... maybe not.

For example, what sort of financial advisor marketing techniques are you presently employing??Ahh… that’s a different question isn’t it?

The internet is the single largest marketing platform for any business these days. However?simply putting up a pretty website is no longer enough to guarantee attention. The internet is a bustling market place and you have to be very strategic in how you position your business.

Then there is the question of what you should be doing to get that traffic. There are a few things to remember:

• Traffic comes from searches
• Your content needs to be optimized for the keywords phrases people use in search
• If your site isn’t optimized for those terms it probably won’t ever get found

The ‘optimization’ part is the process of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and is not a ‘dark art’, nor is it that complex to understand.

SEO simply involves careful research of the search terms used for your sort of business?e.g. ‘financial advice’ or ‘financial advisor’ would be examples of general terms. Such terms would be pretty hard to rank for when you are starting out.

Your content should start out with what are termed ‘long-tail’ phrases, like ‘Financial advisors and tax help’. Fewer sites will be competing for these terms and you can develop solid advice around the term so the reader is happy they found your site.

The way to position for search terms, is have web content that mentions the terms sufficiently often in all the right places.?There is no point continually repeating the terms over and over again.?That makes for very poor reader-friendliness and annoys the heck out the search engines. When the engines get annoyed they end up penalizing your site for ‘keyword stuffing’.

The way to get around this is to have lots of content. Have a continuous stream of new (keyword optimized) content being added to your site.

This is one of the main reasons why?blogging?has become so popular and successful over the last ten years. You can blog about the sorts of things your client prospects want to read about.

As I’ve said already you have to ensure your important keywords are tastefully included in the copy. This becomes a win-win-win.?

The engines win because they?love?new content?and will reward your site for giving it to them. The reader wins because they are looking for great free advice, which you keep on giving them at your blog.

You win because the keywords are bringing traffic / people who are probably good client-prospects. This is a rock-solid financial advisor marketing solution for getting your site found in search!

So where does this leave us? Here is?a simple outline?of how to have your site rank consistently for the keyword terms that are most likely to bring you candidates for your financial advice services.

1. Have good quality SEO?research conducted to identify the keyword phrases your site should have featured in its content
2. Develop content?that is informative, engaging, and optimized around the important search terms
3. Drip-feed new content on a continuous basis?(blogging is the simplest way) to your site It doesn’t have to be huge amounts, 3-4 times a month is sufficient to get you noticed?
4. Use social media?to attract additional attention to this new content?
5. Repurpose your content?into other forms - videos (very powerful), infographics, slideshares and mini-eReports. These can get picked up by other sites and will bring additional traffic (and more potential clients)
6. Rinse and repeat

It’s entirely possible to do this on your own and frankly I realize it’s not everyone’s ‘cup of tea’.

But remember not doing steps 1 - 6 above will almost certainly doom your site to be just a ‘pretty website’. It’s also not ‘doing your best’.

To get your head around the challenge of standing out online you may want to download my eBook ‘Escaping the Sea-of-Sameness for Financial Advisors’.

In it you will?learn how to:

• Bring highly qualified client-prospects?to your website
• Improve the?perceived value of your services?through correct positioning
• Counter the 'big box' competitors?with strategies they cannot implement

The advice in the blog post added to the information in this?free eBook?will bring you one step closer to doing your best’ when it comes to growing your business from online traffic and inquires.

So that’s this week’s blog folks...

But if you want help doing the above 1-6 steps...

Read on...

[Unashamed Self-Promotion Section]

For those of you who think even the advice we covered sounds like too much work there is always the option of getting outside help ;)

You have invested good money in your site and by not marketing it properly, you are effectively wasting that investment.

If steps 1-6 above sounds like an awful lot of work - it can be. But there are ways to reduce the workload that would allow you to get on with what you know best - serving your present clients.

Using a blogging platform connected to your site and an agency like Local Search Heroes that specializes in the finance sector, can effectively automate your online marketing.

So I guess I’m pitching a little here. However you know that if you simply gave your clients a step-by-step guide to good financial management most of the time nothing would happen. Because your expertise is what makes the difference. You are also there to ensure they get the results they most desire.

You can contact us if you would like a?free 30 minute consultation, where I can address your most burning marketing questions or challenges.??

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