10 Financial Advisor Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Business

Financial advisors have a lot of competition in the financial marketing space. Whether it be whole agencies or individuals fighting to take their place at the top of the ranks. It usually comes down to which firm can market themselves the best; who can create a lasting impact and draw in the most clients while providing top-notch service and reliability.

What Can Marketing Do for Me as a Financial Advisor?

Marketing is all about making your firm or self stand out from the crowd. The point of marketing as an advisor is to show potential or current clients that you know what you’re doing and how to get things done the right way. Demonstrating that you can be trusted with their finances and are someone they want to work with. In layman’s terms, it’s just selling yourself to customers and ensuring them of their choice to choose you as their financial advisor.

The only issue is that you’re unsure of how marketing can help you, and that’s an understandable concern. But not if you have the strategies to make the marketing work for you instead of the other way around. Follow these “number of” strategies and you are sure to rocket over your previous successes into something even greater.

1. Focus on Building Your Brand

Branding is one of the most important aspects of marketing and successful brand management. Branding helps convey to customers and prospects what to expect from your products and services. There are thousands or even tens of thousands of other financial advisors so it’s up to you to set yourself apart. Make it clear why a client should pick you over another firm. For a financial advisor, it’s of the utmost importance to prove that your skills are the real deal. But go beyond that, show why YOU are a better fit for them than Fidelity or JP Morgan.

This list of branding statistics should highlight how important it is to brand yourself:

• Presenting a brand consistently across platforms can increase revenue by up to 23%
• Brands that blog generate 67% more leads
• 73% of consumers love a brand because of helpful customer service
• 61% of people are more likely to buy from companies that deliver unique content

Branding yourself from scratch can be difficult, follow this beginner’s guide and learn how to plan your financial firm’s branding.

2. Build Trust Through Authentic Marketing

Consumers can be very picky in which companies they choose to support. Businesses like to use the word “transparency” as a buzzword to garner trust and increase customer retention/acquisition. But today’s clientele has become wary of this tactic. Research indicates that the current generation of consumers is less trusting, so as a financial advisor, it’s your job to educate them and establish yourself as a financial expert.

Be sure to teach consumers the basics of the industry and how your advisory can enrich their finances. Establish your customer-company relationship as a two-way street, it’s important to show clients that you want them to succeed as both sides benefit from a healthy relationship.

Building trust can take a lot of work but being known as a trustworthy advisor pays for itself. Show you’re authentic and trustworthy by:

• Be Clear and Direct
• Be Honest and Vulnerable
• Create a Community
• Consistently Interact with Your Audience
• Take Responsibility for Mistakes
• Communicate Openly with How You Plan to Fix Issues

3. Invest in Social Media

Social media marketing has become a staple in any business plan. Being the best place to announce new products/services, host events, show off some recent philanthropy or engage with followers.

Getting to know your audience makes it easier to serve them when it comes down to business, but it also works vice versa. The more you know your business clients the easier it is to create social media content suited to them. This is where it becomes a balancing act of posting content that suits your current clients while also creating something new to attract new possible customers.

Social media starts with knowing your goals. The important thing to remember is don’t overwhelm yourself, social media is not something to overthink. The idea of social media is to have a platform to engage with your audience while having fun and sharing information. To start with, ask yourself these questions:

• What should I post to get engagement?
• When should I post?
• What is my goal?
• How do I want my posts to be remembered?
• What feelings or emotions do I want to convey?
• When visitors visit my post, what type of follow-up action do I want them to take?

Deciding to become active on social media is only half of the battle. Now you have to figure out what content is beneficial to both the agency and those who follow you. While it may be difficult at first, once you figure out your social media voice it’s smooth sailing from there. Looking for some more guidance? Our post on getting started with social media is a great place to begin. . Below are some steps to take when you’ve decided on your brand’s voice and want to begin posting.

4. Share Meaningful Content

Your marketing should showcase your firm’s personality and provide value to your visitors. On your website, this is expressed through your blog. Content here should focus on the client first, providing education and answers to common questions to establish yourself as a resource.

If you’re looking for some quick tips on how you can create quality content, then check out this quick video from Samantha Russel, Chief Evangelist for FMG and Twenty over Ten:

Lastly, social media is where you’ll share this content, but it’s also where you spotlight your firm’s personality. Share your interests beyond work, and celebrate your community, so don’t be afraid to get personal and have fun.

5. Don’t Fall for Common Social Media Traps

Many advisors begin social media only to abandon it after receiving little response. Social media, however, does not provide an immediate return. It is a long-term investment. To see benefits to your business, you need to stick around. And the key to any successful social media account is engagement.

To prioritize engagement, you’ll want to make a habit of commenting on other users’ content, even if it’s someone you’ve never talked to before. Tag people who you believe will engage with your posts, start a back and forth. Lastly, make sure to reply to any comments on your posts.

By doing so, you increase the chances of engagement with your own content. This creates a snowball effect as other users reciprocate your comments with their own, eventually increasing the reach of your posts.

Of course, beyond engagement, you also need to provide value within your content to ensure longevity. This is where our tip before this comes in.

6. Create and Maintain a Marketing Schedule

Staying organized is important. Try to have a schedule for the days and times you want to post and share content. As you continue to use social media, you’ll learn what times are the best for posting. This is different for everyone, especially if you’re using multiple platforms. Be sure to keep tabs and consider using a calendar to keep track of your posting schedule.

7. Track Your Success

While social media posting is a great way to interact and engage with customers, the main goal is to increase business. Keeping track of your analytics is important to figure out how your outreach efforts are progressing. Which in turn allows you to determine which posts work best for your audience. The big three social media sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) have a built-in statistics page allowing you to see how many users have either observed or engaged with your posts.

8. Prioritize Email for Communication

Social media isn’t the only way for financial advisors to keep in contact with customers. According to YCharts’ Client Communications report, email marketing is the preferred method of communication for the majority of advisor clients. Sending out personalized emails announcing new products/services, events and updates allow firms to keep customers in the know. Email campaigns are a common form of email marketing as it allows for mass messaging, typically involving newsletters.

What’s important to remember when writing newsletters for email campaigns is to:

• Make sure the content is relevant
• Don’t just promote your services, the goal is to provide the reader with information
• Communicate frequently and consistently, especially during times of uncertainty
• Keep in touch during the good times; birthdays, holidays, and just to check-in
• Ensure that content is a good length, the goal is to educate and communicate, not have them read a textbook

If you’re unsure of how to get started in email marketing. Check out Lead Pilot, a tool that gives financial advisors an all-in-one, intuitive platform to dramatically increase the number of leads and simplify the entire inbound marketing process.

9. Optimize Your Website for Conversions

It’s rare that you find a successful business without a website. As Google and other search engines continue to grow, websites become the cornerstone of customer research. And a study from SurveyMonkey showed that 26% of U.S. consumers don’t trust companies without a site. As a financial advisor, trust is the most important aspect of customer retention. Assure your clients that their finances are in good hands with a website that details who you are, what you do, and how you do it.

Websites should provide customers with a one-stop-shop for all their needs. Whether it is searching for information, finding services, or just getting in contact. Your duty as a financial advisor with a site is to make everything as seamless and easy as possible. If you’re unsure about what it takes to create a great business site, take a look at this list:

• Make it easy to find
• Make sure it’s easy to navigate
• Keep your design simple but clean
• Ensure your website runs smoothly and loads fast
• Get personal, show off your brand
• Incorporate SEO best practices
• Have a CTA (Call-to-Action)

Need help figuring it all out? Don’t worry, we have you covered. Turn your creative vision into a reality with Twenty over Ten’s Website Engine. Designed with customization and ease of use in mind. Website Engine gives you the power to create a site that is personalized, drives more traffic, looks great on all devices, is secure, and connects you to all your favorite apps.

10. Start a Blog

Now that you’ve created a website, it’s important to find a way to bring in more site visitors. Blogging is an exceptional way to bring new users to your website. Along with giving current clients something to read up on. Providing information through blogs not only keeps your customers informed but also helps establish that trust and reliability that makes a financial advisory firm stand out.

Keeping a consistent schedule is always important when planning to blog. Schedule a day and time each week that you want to publish a new piece of content, and consistently post. Don’t be afraid to use other advisors’ blogs as inspiration for your own, just be sure to credit them when quoting statistics or information.

Here are 3 Blog Trends to Attract Clients in 2022:

Improve content experience

Blogs are no longer about just graphics and text, but about what the content experience is like. Strong CTA’s, strong imagery, a clearly defined niche, and a unique value proposition are important in improving the overall experience.

Data-Driven Blogging

Statistics are important when blogging as it allows you to track how your content is performing. Use Google Analytics to see your blog metrics. Watch for the average number of monthly visitors, number of pages seen per user session, bounce rate, and conversion rate.

Content that is Highly Visual

People only read about 20% of content on a page according to a recent study. That shows that catching the attention of a reader by using strong visuals is crucial to a blog’s success. Some examples of strong visuals include infographics, screenshots, GIFs, and videos.

Follow the link to learn 6 More Blogging Trends in 2022 that will boost your blog’s success.

That’s All Folks

Always remember to update and expand on these strategies. The more you put into them, the more you get out. Think of the strategies as fertilizer and your firm as the flower. Adding “fertilizer” to your firm will help to grow healthy and strong. All it takes is you putting in the effort and in no time you’ll have a flourishing business that you can be proud of. And if you ever feel like you need more fertilizer, we welcome you to come back to this article and stock up.