When an interested party investigates a financial service professional, they start a “client journey” consisting of different “touch-points.” At each step of their journey, they evaluate whether continuing down the path with the advisor will be valuable. By creating a clear journey and helping prospects along the way, you can reach and nurture qualified leads for financial advisors over time.
One of the most potent offerings you can offer to incentivize prospects to take your calls to action is high-value content. Quality digital assets, like FMG Suite’s Lead Generating ebooks, provide a strong value proof-point to attract qualified leads for financial advisors. A great piece of content will serve as the hub for your marketing journey.
For a prospect to move from one touchpoint to another, they have to respond to calls to action. One of the most common mistakes financial advisors make when developing their client journey is to ask too much too soon. If you don’t provide enough proof of value, they will feel like you ask for more than you are offering.
Offering quality content can dramatically increase the number of qualified leads willing to give you their information. Once they are in your marketing ecosystem, they graduate from simple investigators to legitimate prospects. Creating a client journey that provides more value than it asks for at each touch-point will encourage investigators to become your ideal prospects and, ultimately, long-term clients.
Client Journey Map
Here is a six-step client journey that uses content to bridge the gap between investigator and prospect, so you can find more qualified leads for your financial advisory.
1.SEO
The first step of your client journey is creating awareness of your financial firm brand. To find the right audience, you need to send out the right signals. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of making sure your website communicates well with search engines. Your SEO needs to define what kind of questions you are qualified to answer.
Your website should include several of the same keywords and phrases found in your content download. If Google or Bing sends one of their users to your site, they look for signals the searcher found their answer, like time on site or number of pages visited. They will reward effective sites with the same type of traffic in the future.
If your site does not align with your content’s message, search engines won’t put it in front of the right eyes.
2. Social Posts
Another way qualified leads will find your financial services business is through social media. While it can be a powerful tool for reaching audiences, the number of posts and and requests for information on social media means investigators will have their guard up.
After you create a quality piece of content, or use a pre-created ebook from FMG Suite, it’s recommended that you share it on social media. One great way to attract a prospect to your blog posts is to provide a “snackable” piece of information, like a quote, a statistic, video, or anything else you think could pique a potential new client’s interest in a sentence or two. By creating engaging posts, there’s a much better chance someone will click through to your website and learn more.
3. Blogs
Consistently posting blogs to your website has numerous benefits:
- It proves you are an active participant in your online presence.
- It demonstrates and defines your area of expertise.
- It fuels your social media efforts.
It is also one of the best ways to motivate your prospects to download an ebook on your website.
One only has to think of their feelings about handing out their email to understand why it is a big ask of a prospect. There needs to be motivation, but also a fraction of trust. If you haven’t given them anything of value to this point, why would they think your downloadable ebook would be any different?
After reading a quality blog, they are more likely to share their information. So far, you have shown the prospect that you have the answers they need at every step. They can expect the ebook, whitepaper, or infographic will be worth it.
When choosing what blogs to write, think about the topic of your prospecting ebook and pick more focused topics related to that. For example, an ebook about the Secure Act would be well-paired with a blog introducing the act and explaining some unique aspects of it that would be important to your ideal prospect.
Your goal is to attract the prospects that are asking the questions you can best answer. Once they get the sense they are on the right trail from your blog, they will be more likely to take a call-to-action to download an ebook, therefore becoming a qualified lead for financial advisors.
4. Landing Page.
When a prospect decides to download an ebook, they will change their mind very quickly if the sign-up process does not meet their expectations. If they get the sense you’ve misled them, it will affect their likelihood of completing the download process.
A good landing page will match the calls to action (CTA) that brought the investigator there. If someone who has clicked a social link or a CTA at the end of a blog arrives on a landing page where the wording or design is not consistent, a red flag will go up.
The design of the form they fill out is important as well. The more information you ask for in a sign-up form, the lower your percentage of sign-ups will be.
For financial advisors, we recommend asking for their full name and email address. While you may choose this point to ask for a phone number, just know it is perceived as a higher-value piece of information, and therefore will require more motivation. Remember that downloading an ebook is not always a sign this qualified lead is ready to become a client – at least not yet.
5. Nurture Campaigns
After providing you with their information, the prospect has become a lead. This is a great achievement and an important step. However, if your client journey ends with generating a lead, you won’t turn many of them into clients.
When a qualified lead provides their email to download your financial advisor ebook they are given the option to receive further emails from you. They can now be added to a “nurture campaign”, an ongoing series of emails meant to let them get to know your brand over a few months.
FMG Suite customers can place these ebook downloaders in a specific group, then set up an email sequence directed specifically to this group. By sending an email every 2 weeks, you can provide them with more information about the content they downloaded, and help continue their journey from qualified lead to financial advisory client.
These emails should contain more links to content and resources that demonstrate your value and expertise. You can also begin to introduce more serious calls to action, like scheduling a phone call or consultation.
6. Open-Ended Campaigns
Once a prospect has considered all of the available information they might engage your services. There is also a good chance they won’t, at least not yet. It may take months or even years before they are in the right place to pick up the phone and call you.
By providing these kinds of prospects with ongoing monthly newsletters and market insight is a great way to stay top-of-mind until they need you. The more relevant content and prospecting ebooks you supply over the long-term, the more likely they are to go to you when the need arises.
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We understand that creating your own ebooks and content can be a challenge. FMG Suite’s content library for those on our Attract or Elevate packages includes a variety of quality ebooks meant to capture the attention of a prospect so they become a qualified lead, and eventually a client. These ebooks can be set up as pop-ups, sections on your website, or even specific landing pages that can easily be promoted across social media and email. Schedule a demo today to learn more about how quality content can help drive more qualified leads for financial advisors.