Low-Budget Marketing Ideas to Skyrocket Your Advisor Business

The key to growing your advisor business is a strong marketing strategy with the ability to connect to your audience. In an ideal world, you would have unlimited funds to do this, but I know that this is not the case, especially if you are a smaller firm.

You want to grow your firm, because that, in turn, will lead to more funds, allotting more for your marketing and other matters. This can be difficult to run a business and still save a large portion for marketing. In order to do this, you need to be sure that you are spending your money wisely and also producing a large Return On Investment (ROI). How do you go about doing this? I have got ideas to help skyrocket your advisor firm!

1. Establish yourself as a Thought Leader

Whether you are just starting out or you have been in the financial industry for a long time, it is important that you constantly establish yourself as a thought-leader in the industry. One way to do this is by creating and maintaining a blog section on your website.

When someone is googling questions relating to finances, wouldn't it be awesome if they could easily find the answer on your advisor site? This is such a great way to drive leads, where they can in-turn refer your website to other companies! It is pertinent though to keep this page updated because people will stop going to your website if they aren't certain that they will find the answer that they are looking for.

Twenty Over Ten client, C.L. Sheldon & Company, keeps an updated blog section that pertains to their niche of wealth management for the military. It's important that your blog provides your niche with helpful and relevant information. Remember, you are there to serve them so use your blog to show them how you are able to do so.

2. Content is King

By now, I am sure you have probably heard the words content marketing many times. If done well, then content marketing is extremely effective. There are so many suggestions out there and it can be hard to decide which strategies are best for your firm. Obviously, it will vary from business to business, but there are certain things to keep in mind when it comes to creating content that will generate traffic.

Be sure that you are engaging and entertaining your readers...it is so important that your information draws people in because 55% of visitors spend fewer than 15 seconds on your website, which means you need to captivate them right from the start.

Be sure that you are also providing them with information...teach them something they might not have known! If you truly want to be known as a thought leader, be a teacher in the industry.

An extremely important part that can't be overlooked is to include a call-to-action (CTA). With every piece of content that you create, you want for your readers to take action. This may be to schedule a meeting, download a whitepaper, sign up for a newsletter, anything that will take them to the next level to eventually become a client.

In the example below, Twenty Over Ten client Eagle Ridge Wealth Advisors has a CTA at the end of their blog to encourage readers to sign up for their newsletter.

3. Repurpose your Content

When it comes to creating content for your website, you can never have too much. There is a wealth of knowledge that you can provide to your readers, and it's better to have too much than too little. As I mentioned above, it's important to keep your information updated. Optimizing your blog content is a great way to drive traffic to your site and generate leads.

On average, compounding blog posts make up 10% of all blog posts and generate 38% of overall traffic.

If you find yourself short on content, you can very easily repurpose it. You may have had a great blog that was written last year, that is no longer showing in searches. Check it out, see how you can optimize that blog. Remove outdated links, put in new keywords, and rephrase your work. This is a great way to get more "bang for your buck." You spent all that time creating the content, so why not use it as long as possible?

4. Don't Forget About Images and Infographics

If you use the right images on your website, it can quickly boost your site’s leads and help you to connect better with your audience. When writing a blog post, you can include a powerful image to relate to your post, and this will make it much more memorable. Adding an image to your content can increase the amount of information remembered after 3 days from 10% to 65%. That's a huge jump.

When creating social media posts, be sure to create images with vibrant colors and eye-catching photos. At Twenty Over Ten, we like to create images with Canva. It will definitely help the information to stick much more than just words.

In addition to photos, if you have interesting data, then share it in an infographic. You can very easily pop this into a blog or on your website that provides vibrant colors and a screengrab of key facts and information that will be of use to your readers.

5. Remember your Keywords

What exactly are keywords? They are simply words throughout your website that define what your content is about. They can be in your bio, on your homepage, or in blog posts. They can be placed almost anywhere on your website and be considered a keyword. Using a word frequently throughout your website says something about your firm. It allows visitors to quickly see what you will be discussing.

Ultimately, they communicate to top search engines like Google about the information that is on your website. When a phrase is entered into the search box, search engines want to pull the most relevant and useful websites to populate the search engine results page (SERP). To do so, they rely on the keywords you use in their algorithm to determine if your website fits the criteria. When this happens, that is what helps to start driving visitors to your website.

The image below for the Twenty Over Ten blog tells us that we’re currently ranking in position #1 for the keyword query “best financial advisor websites.”

6. Start Conversations in the Right Social Media Groups

You can connect with your audience in Facebook Groups without paying for a single thing. Facebook is filled to the brim with people looking to give and receive information.

There are so many people that use Facebook so you may be asking yourself, where do you even begin? Well, start by finding groups that are relevant to your niche, and then simply start to prove that you are trustworthy and knowledgeable by asking questions and answering ones that are relevant to you.

7. Narrow Down your Focus on Social Media

When you are working with a small budget, remember to make your money count! Don't feel the need to cover all of the platforms, but rather find the ones that are best suited to your business. If you want to see real results with your social media marketing, you need to narrow your focus. Focus on one or two social media platforms, rather than spreading your company thin by covering all of them. It is about quality...not quantity.

By funneling your resources into the platforms your audience uses most, you can get the most bang for your marketing buck—and avoid wasting budget trying to spread yourself thin across too many platforms.

It's also helpful to look at your social media analytics to determine which social media platforms your niche audience is engaging and spending the most time on. Below is Twenty Over Ten's Facebook analytics. Your analytics can help you determine the age of your followers as well as their engagement with your content. Once you have looked at your various social media platform's analytics, you will be able to decipher where your audience is frequenting the most. This will help you determine which platforms are optimal for your business to be on.

8. Cross-Promote your Content on Social Media

If you just spent an hour or more creating a blog post for your advisor website, why wouldn't you do everything in your power to promote it? A huge factor to generate exposure for your firm and ultimately turn potential leads into clients is by cross-promoting your content across your social channels.

If you take a look at the Twenty Over Ten Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, you will notice that we vary the types of content we share across each platform. We use a cross-promotion strategy to help make scheduling across several platforms easier and more efficient.

Some important factors to remember are how you promote your work on different channels. As an advisor, you work with all different types of clientele who are looking for guidance in different areas of their life. Because of this, you cannot simply use the same message across the board and expect to see results. To effectively cross-promote your work, you need to tailor your message to each individual platform.

For example, when promoting your blog content on LinkedIn, you’ll want to come across as more professional, while Facebook should be professional as well but you can have a little more fun with how your message comes across. On Twitter, you have a limited amount of characters, so it’s a balance of effectively promoting your work in a limited amount of space.

In the post below, we wrote a blog about generating the perfect blog post and have shared an image and link on our Facebook page to reach even more followers.

9. Increase Reach by Partnering with Others

If you want to get your business in front of new eyes without spending too much on a marketing campaign, try reaching out to other businesses that already work with your target audience.

Business owners should check out their own marketing channels to identify potential placements for partner messaging, it may be asking to be mentioned on social channels, potentially on a flyer, newsletter, Eblast, webinars, or however you can get your name out there!

A great way to partner with others in the industry is to collaborate on a webinar. In one of Twenty Over Ten's recent webinars, we partnered with Kyle Moore, CFP? to learn his story of how he made the leap to start his own advisory firm, Quarry Hill Advisors.

10. Get your Name Out There

Don't forget about the power of public relations! You need to get your company mentioned in papers, magazines, radios, online, however, you see fit. It's important to identify relevant outfits and see which ones will best fit your business.

To up your chances of securing media coverage, make sure the angle you’re pitching is relevant to the publication. Continually be checking the news and searching for trending topics so that whatever you are pitching is timely, as this will make you much more likely to secure something.

In the example below, one of Twenty Over Ten's blogs was shared by eMoney Advisor. When someone sees your name mentioned in the media, this adds legitimacy to your advisor business and will help to drive awareness to your company in the future. If you want people to share your content, try sharing theirs first and they will likely return the favor if your content is noteworthy and valuable.

11. Remember the Importance of Customer Outreach

Sometimes, the simplest and most cost-effective way to market yourself is to simply reach out to your customers. With all the different apps and tech tools we have these days, you forget about the importance of just simply reaching out directly.

This "humanizes" you and shows that you care about them and getting to know them better. This is so important when you are going to be potentially working with someone.

12. Get Referrals Through Incentive Programs

Most people will jump at the chance to win something, and that really serves in your favor. Offer some type of prize to one person or multiples, and make the cost of entry the contact information that is necessary to convert your contest entrants into customers. This is so simple and generally only takes 30 seconds or less. They will simply be able to list an email address or something that allows you to get in touch.

This can take trial and error, but like anything good, practice makes perfect! Remember to keep track of how many customers each giveaway actually nets and you can adjust your strategy accordingly.

In the example below Twenty Over Ten client, Raskin Planning Group offers a copy of their Whitepaper to site visitors in exchange for their contact information.

13. It's Okay to Take Risks

Don’t be afraid to take risks in your marketing. A lot of business owners shy away from taking a strong stance on certain subjects and "play it safe." Keep in mind though, that is you grab someone's attention with powerful words, that is a great way to do low-budget marketing. This will not cost you a thing, and it's better to do something memorable rather than keep the content mundane.

Obviously, use your good judgment when determining what risks you should take, but be sure to make yourself stand out positively. It will be a great way to drive traffic.