According to a small study, up to 70% of financial advisors only receive 0-1 leads per month from their website.
Are you part of this 70%? If so, we have some good news for you.
No matter how few leads your website generates, you can turn this around dramatically. The secret to this lies in implementing good marketing funnels for your services.
Creating an effective sales funnel is doable for everyone — as long as you know what steps to take.
If you want to wrap your head around this indispensable part of digital marketing, then stay with us, as we break down exactly what a sales funnel is, how advisors use them, and five key steps to creating one that converts like a lead machine.
What Is a Marketing Funnel?
Marketing funnels are based on the customer journey. Leading up to a transaction or purchase, customers go through similar processes.
Marketing funnels cater to these stages, directing correctly timed and tailored information that will lead the buyer down the digital marketing funnel.
The Customer Journey
The initial stage in the customer journey is the awareness stage. This when a lead first becomes aware that you exist.
After this initial period is the interest stage. Here, the person develops an interest in your services or offerings. This can also be the stage in which they realize they have a problem (such as a need for more a diversified portfolio or higher returns).
Then comes the decision stage. Leads know about you, they have a problem they need to be solved, and they are interested in your solutions. During the decision stage, they are also actively researching, potentially comparing solutions, and looking for more in-depth information on your offerings.
Last comes the action stage. Here, the lead takes action and makes the purchase. In the case of financial advisor services, they might take you on to advise them, or press “go” on a financial product you are recommending.
Marketing Funnels Aim to Serve the Buyer in Their Journey
A marketing funnel aims to serve and target leads at each step in the buyer journey.
For example, when leads are in the interest stage, your marketing funnel needs to position your brand before them and provide them with useful information and resources to help them along the customer journey. This could look like blog posts, eBooks, or free webinar content.
By giving them useful information that answers their questions, you will be positioning yourself as a finance authority in their minds. By the time leads come to the decision stage, they will have already built up a level of trust in you.
During the decision stage, you should also direct leads to more in-depth information on your services and offerings. During this time, they will be comparing you with other options, and they’ll want as many details on your services as possible.
How Financial Advisors Use Sales Funnels
If you offer financial advisor services, you must tailor your marketing to the customer journey.
Consumers may be willing to risk buying a low-cost item from a company that errs on the side of annoying, spammy marketing. But they will be far less likely to risk their finances with a financial advisor who looks “money-hungry” or overly pushy.
Hiring a financial advisor is a big decision. Leads are likely to spend more time in the decision phase than they would for consumable items or services, like a carwash.
You need to make sure you are giving your leads all the time they need during the interest and decision stages. However, you don’t want them to forget about you.
To avoid this, financial advisors create sales funnels that feed leads the key information they need, when they need it. This could be things like content around investment strategies and tax planning.
Doing this will position you at the forefront of leads’ searches, giving you a higher likelihood of being their final choice in their hunt for financial services.
It also makes you a resource for leads before they have even signed up with you. In the customer’s mind, if you are already providing them with so much information and guidance, you’re likely to continue yielding this value to them once they become a customer.
Steps to Creating Better Marketing Funnels for Financial Advisors
Creating well-designed marketing funnels is essential for financial advisors.
But how does one do this? What are the exact steps involved?
Here are five of the most important steps to take when creating a sales funnel.
1. Formulate Your Unique Sales Funnel
First, you will need to take the time to formulate your own unique sales funnel and plan how it will tie into the customer journey. As mentioned above, the sales cycle is usually longer for financial services than for smaller products and services.
When formulating your unique sales funnel, you should try to leverage as much data as possible. Data-driven sales funnels will have a higher chance of success, as relevant data will help you target leads appropriately, keeping them locked into your funnel.
2. Generate Website Traffic With SEO Content and Paid Ads
One of the most important parts of a sales funnel is traffic generation. Therefore, you need to think about how you are going to get leads into your digital marketing funnel.
Two of the main ways to generate traffic are SEO content and paid ads.
For initially attracting leads into your sales funnel, you should focus on answering awareness/interest-stage questions around finance. You can use blogging for this, and you can also create videos and slides. Holding conferences, seminars, and webinars is also a powerful customer acquisition strategy for financial advisors.
A great way to come up with content topics is to look at the questions your leads and clients are already asking. If you have a comment section on your blog, mine this for relevant questions you can create content around.
Also, don’t forget about social media. Social media platforms are essential for directing new leads into your sales funnel. Social media can also be used to connect and nurture leads throughout the buying experience.
For instance, say you decide that you want to make some videos answering common investment questions. If you do this on YouTube, not only with you have access to the platform’s audience, but you’ll also have the opportunity to create a following and a subscriber base, which inevitably will contain some highly qualified leads.
If you want to delve deeper into how to leverage these platforms for your business, check out this post on social media for financial advisors.
When it comes to paid ads, you should focus on both regular display ads as well as retargeted ads. Retargeted ads display to leads that have visited your site, and have proven to have highly effective conversion rates.
3. Creating Landing Pages
Another essential element of any sales funnel is landing pages. If you are unfamiliar with the term, landing pages are pages on your site that feature a sign-up form where leads can submit their email addresses.
If you’d like, you can use a lead magnet offering — such as a free eBook — in exchange for leads’ email addresses. If you don’t want to do this, you can also simply promise to send them free investment and finance information and updates to their inbox.
Now, why are landing pages so essential? Well, they allow you to build your email list for more effective email marketing and keep in touch with your leads.
According to statistics, 92% of customers are not ready to make a purchase decision when they land on your site. This is obviously not the time to hard-sell to them. However, you also don’t want to lose your lead.
Gaining their email addresses via a landing page is an ideal way to build up a database of leads. You can then continue to market to these and keep them in your sales funnel.
4. Nurture Lead Relationships Through Email Marketing
The first rule when it comes to email marketing is to create engaging emails. If you create content and emails that your leads look forward to receiving, then you are off to the races.
Also, make sure that you don’t mail too often. Instead, aim for a weekly, bi-weekly, or even monthly schedule.
Always try to serve your leads and foster a relationship with them, rather than attempting to trigger a sale with an unqualified lead. Research has revealed that nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads, so don’t underestimate the power of nurturing tactics.
Besides email marketing, you can also look into implementing direct mail marketing: an underutilized and highly effective lead nurturing strategy that is ideally suited for the financial sector.
5. Continuously Test and Refine Your Sales Funnel
Lastly, you should always be testing and refining your marketing funnel.
Based on the results you get from A/B testing, you can modify your sales funnel to retain and convert more leads. Some areas to test are your landing pages, marketing emails, homepage, and ads.
Do You Want to Take Your Financial Advisory Business to the Next Level?
Effective digital marketing funnels are powerful sources of leads, which can trigger amazing conversion rates for your financial advisory services.
However, this isn’t the only marketing strategy you need to know about. Do you want to lead your business off the plateau and potentially double your revenue in the next 12 months?
If the answer is yes, contact us to find out how you can prosper with our free resources and expert strategies.
