Getting more financial planner leads doesn’t need to be tough. Some knowledge about the best lead generation strategies plus organization can solve over 50% of the issue. If you aren’t generating leads right now, it is because you’re using outdated strategies that don’t continue to work for every niche. Thus, updating your efforts and plans will be the first step.
We recommend that anyone who is starting or in this journey already focus on online strategies more than offline ones. They will offer you more for your budget, and results are easier to achieve and track.
We will be lending you a hand to ensure you’re creating your lead generation plan with the important factors and aspects that work. For it, look forward to the main strategies you should consider and integrate.
Every financial planner should definitely have those running!
Consistency and Brand Awareness Are Must-Have
Your business is dependent on leads. However, any lead generation for financial planners should be consistent with the brand message and ensure it can be easily understood and even shared.
And for building trust with existing and potential customers, consistency is key for this awareness part.
Suppose you represent your brand as a financial adviser for high-net-worth clients. In that case, any lead generation idea you come up with must reflect your existing brand image and message, and all marketing content should support them both.
As a financial planner, your focus should be on helping these clients with high net worth achieve more in their lives, like working around their real estate properties, acquiring more business, entrepreneurship, etc.
Let them know how you can assist them in reaching their goals and when it comes to clients with less income or revenue, adjust the ideas to what they can afford and their current situation.
Yes, You Need Local SEO
It doesn’t matter who you ask; local SEO is going to be at the top of strategies and factors of their lists to ensure they are generating financial advisor leads and qualified ones at that.
Local searches have seen an exponential increase in popularity. Over 200% growth has been seen in searches that include “open” and “near me,” so if your services or profession is something that works with local communities, take advantage of it.
46% of Google searches are specific items in a person’s community, so you can rest assured you will reach more people if you focus on your area.
Your website should not be the only thing you focus on to ensure your local search rankings are high by using keywords. You should also consider listing your financial advising business.
So, if you want this local SEO to work, focus on these:
- Optimize your Google My Business Listing or start by creating your profile.
- Mobile-friendly websites are essential since most of your leads will access your page using these devices.
- You should ensure that your website contains all relevant alt tags related to your business and niche.
- Get your website assessed and include a link strategy from a professional or someone with enough knowledge.
- Your business name, address, and website URL must match your Google listing.
Use Social Media Platforms & Marketing
Social media is one of the most popular platforms for digital advertising, and this is something we don’t think we have to mention yet, just to be safe.
These platforms offer another opportunity to market your business to thousands of potential clients and be visible where they are spending most of their time.
Every platform offers business services that will help you organize your profiles and reach specific audiences based on your buyer persona and statistics like age, genre, and more.
Social media is essential for lead generation success for financial planners since, believe it or not, users are quite exposed to expenses with all the commercial pages and online stores. Thus, having someone who can help them control or achieve their goals when it comes to money can be quite a fit.
For any business, it is important to join as many platforms that are relevant for them as long as they are popular with your clients.
These decisions can be made by professional marketers who are able to assist firms with multiple demographic factors or just focus on manual yet effective research.
Facebook is the most popular platform and has the highest daily user base despite its current popularity falling a bit.
In terms of size, Instagram is a rival to Facebook. This network is also owned and operated by the latter, but the type of content is different, making it a place for usually other types of customers for you.
On the other hand, Snapchat is the most popular platform for young people, and the majority of Pinterest users are female.
LinkedIn is often overlooked as a social networking site, but it can be a great tool for lead generation for financial planners.
It is different from other networks in that people visit it to learn professional information and is a place where users can network and connect with others who share the same interests and career paths.
It is a great place for your services to be featured and ads about your company. This channel is focused more on celebrating company achievements and promoting their services, so you shouldn’t miss it.
We Won’t Forget About Paid Advertising
Digital advertising is vital for any company, independent professional, or business since the ads bought on platforms like Facebook or Google can be tailored for your target audience and shown only to them.
However, it is often used wrongly or with a strategy that isn’t thought through properly.
But if you know how to work around it, paid digital advertising is a cost-effective way to promote your company.
Google and Facebook are the two most prominent places to place digital ads and the first option charges based on how many people click on your ad.
Facebook charges a daily fee based on the number of users your campaign reaches. Your ads may reach thousands of people every day, depending on how much your budget is and how you designed your entire campaign.
Digital ads can be used on almost any online platform. YouTube offers banner ads that can be displayed on videos. Instagram and Twitter use digital ads. Pinterest offers sponsored pins.
You will be able to create a variety of digital campaigns once you have identified the best places to connect with your audience.
Traditional advertising is still a viable option for lead generation, so you could consider it but don’t do it as the first option.
Email Marketing Still Works
Or more like, why wouldn’t it continue to work?
Email marketing is part of the top 5 strategies when it comes to lead generation, and this doesn’t exclude any business or niche so that financial planner leads can be generated with it.
Nearly everyone has an email address, which means this channel is open for over 90% of your target audience.
According to research and recent statistics, email marketing has a 40% higher effectiveness than social media since everyone is trying to check their inboxes every day either because they wait for important information or trying to get an offer.
Email marketing also has the best ROI of all marketing channels. This may sound amazing when you consider how many emails you delete every day.
And if you don’t believe us so far, the numbers don’t lie:
- People click on an average of one in every one thousand online ads. Google’s average is 1 in 250, and Facebook follows 1 out of 1950.
- Emails can generate a return on investment of $44 for every $1 spent.
- Companies with the highest open rate send at most two emails per month.
- There are many ways to increase open rates, including using emojis when appropriate and short subject lines.
- It is six times more likely for a company to click on a link within an email than on social media.
Channels That Need Your Attention
Many marketing platforms can be used to promote lead generation for financial planners yet are usually ignored.
Your personal website is the most important. Not only is it crucial for branding, but also so that potential customers can find you and your services.
Your existing customers will tell their friends about you and usually direct them to a website besides the common social media profiles.
Your website can be used to show your skills and what you can offer your customers in an easier way than relying on unstable social media algorithms.
Other options and methods include:
- Networking groups: multiple options exist for finding local groups. The app Meetup can help you find like-minded people or groups to join that share clientele or similar services. This usually helps to exchange contacts and make sure you are able to connect with more people.
- Local Groups: reach out to groups related to your services, profession, or business. See if you can schedule a time to come in and do a presentation for their members that might be interested in your financial planner services.
- Magazines and newspapers: you may find a reporter who wants to feature the various aspects of financial planning and advising, so you can offer your knowledge and get a shout-out in return and other benefits.
- Elevate your brand name and reputation: read local journals and periodicals to see if there are opportunities for you to get your name into their publication.
- Sponsor someone or something locally: there are always local entities that are looking for businesses to help them in some way. If it makes financial sense, sponsor a billboard or ad at a sporting event or any moment that can be valuable for your business. All of those things elevate your profile within your local community and give you positive exposure.
- Use paid lead sources: organic leads are great since they are mostly qualified ones since the fact they come from your marketing efforts is terrific. However, to make sure that you always have potential customers coming in, paid lead generation sources are excellent tools to use, but as long as you find the right professionals for it.
Hosting Webinars & Educational Sessions
In-person events have been a key stay of financial planner lead-gen strategies for decades. However, they are difficult to manage safely during a pandemic, so you might need to rely on the digital option or adjust them as much as you can to the current conditions.
But why would you want to hold webinars and sessions?
They make it easier for you to connect with your potential clients and capture the information of prospects when they register for your webinar or view it on-demand.
This will allow you to maintain and nurture the relationship. Keep in mind, however, that new business is rarely closed after just one interaction.
Now, the entire focus on these events and sessions is to answer their questions and show your value. Thus, it isn’t a waste of effort but a smart alternative that not many are willing to handle.
Partner with CPAs & Influential Centers
Referrals can be great for financial businesses offering similar but different services. So, if you have a customer or client base and can exchange it with another company related to the niche to share the contacts, that would be great.
Your marketing efforts will likely target the same customers as CPAs, tax planning offices, insurance companies, and other financial service organizations.
It is possible to work with small local businesses to help each other grow their customer base, as these services are often well defined. These relationships can be leveraged to reach new audiences.
This can help you become a more comprehensive one-stop-shop for you by referring clients to trusted partners.
Thanks to the great recommendations, this eliminates the need for clients to search out these services themselves and rely more on you.
Create & Add Regular Content for Your Website
Blogs are a great way to attract organic search traffic and to show your expertise to potential clients.
Blog posts can promote webinars and other premium content as well as be the first point of touch for the previous strategies we have mentioned that aren’t related to social media.
We already mentioned that your website is an excellent place to promote marketing guidelines for advisors and bring clients.
You can distribute new website content via email, social media, and other marketing channels to complement your efforts; this will increase its reach and help generate more leads for your financial planning firm.
Your business can be involved in and drive important conversations about financial advising by staying active.
SEO-optimized, free content will increase your website’s visibility and organic reach among your target audience.
You’ll also make it easier for them to evaluate your services, brand voice, and expertise in order to decide if working with you.
Guest Blogging Works
Building visibility is the key to generating financial planner leads. Besides the option of working by yourself, networking, or partnerships with the usual methods, you can guest blog on partner websites to reach potential customers.
You can seek guest bloggers to complement your content and educational materials, exposing you to their audiences and getting more leads.
You can also attract new audiences to your website by hosting guest bloggers with a significant social media presence.
Cross-promotional activities can help you brand your company and reach thought leaders beyond your content distribution channels. This can generate new leads and engage prospects.
Leads from Current Clients
Referring clients to your advisory firm can be one of the most efficient and effective ways to grow it.
In fact, referrals are the top option for most companies and independent workers since they gain trust, brand awareness and are able to get clients without having to pay for them.
The best way to make this method work is by showing your clients that you care by continuing to offer value to those referring you or who you’ve worked with before by giving discounts or benefits.
This can also create a continuous cycle of lead generation if these new clients refer others to your business.
It’s easy to approach existing clients for referrals by simply mentioning the topic in your email newsletter or even social media.
Generate Leads & Close Deals
Your first step to growing your financial planner business is lead generation. However, you must also ensure that you have the right processes in place to convert these leads and have your clients.
A CRM is required to track and manage new leads to determine if they are also sales qualified leads and not general ones.
This will allow you to organize your sales and marketing efforts for each prospect. Without a plan, your lead generation efforts will be wasted, and you’ll have a low return on investment, and high-quality leads are far from happening.
You should create the marketing strategies and content channels you need to qualify these leads.
As we mentioned before, start generating content by creating a blog. Create an email newsletter service and send a drip campaign to everyone who registers through your website.
While content is a great way to generate leads, you must also plan to engage them once they are there.
You should plan how to engage prospects who sign up for your upcoming financial webinar with financial advice. Include the email addresses you’ll send, whether you plan to call them, and the content you’ll use to guide them through the sales funnel to convert.
These stages should be addressed in your content.
A blog post or infographic might be helpful for prospects as they are near making a decision. You can create a plan for how and when you will distribute it.
Your messaging should be polished as you begin to generate leads for your financial planning firm and your CRM should be running smoothly, and all members of your team are aligned to engage these prospects and guide them towards a new client.
Final Tips for Financial Planner Leads Generation
Whether you like it or not, you will have to continuously adjust to the strategies you can use and the options available or what is more popular based on how society and technology progress.
Thus, these are a few tips you will need to make this entire lead generation process work:
- Follow the trends.
Since more people are searching online by having to deal with the lockdown experience, you have to take advantage of the increase of searches for financial planners.
Although it takes time to build a brand online for your firm and work on the SEO (search engine optimization) and everything we have mentioned so far, take your time and make sure to keep the trends in mind as you go.
- You don’t have to limit yourself to local searches.
Financial advisors are not likely to look beyond their local area for potential clients. However, you don’t have to do this.
According to statistics, over 60% of respondents were open to working remotely with an advisor, so you can have more clients even if they aren’t in the same city or area.
You could be losing leads if you only look for prospects in your area.
Consider broadening the scope of your search and working with investors who are more comfortable meeting in person less often.
- Stay one step ahead.
If you adopt a generational approach, your advisory business could thrive over the years or even decades.
Investors or regular people who are closer to retirement tend to have more assets. However, those from Generations X or Y are quickly catching up.
Your business could be more sustainable if you are able to get ahead of the Great Wealth Transfer by expanding your client base and working with all the audience that can be interested in your services as a financial planner.
The Local Lead Generation Process for Your Financial Planning Business
All right! So, everything is about building properties and generating leads. But how does the process actually take place? Are there other steps I need to know?
The steps I mention below are what students from our local lead generation program follow to generate leads for businesses like yourself. So I’ll help you see what we do. And how if you join our program, you can simply generate leads for your own business (unless you want to start a side hustle and build a laptop lifestyle business).
Essentially, our lead generation can be divided into four steps:
The first is prospecting. You need to take the time to do market research on a niche (industry) and determine how many phone-driven businesses are there.
Keep in mind that this is local research as you need to know how many companies need leads. For example, you may search for “plumbing services Youngstown OH.”
You will find dozens or even hundreds of businesses trying to get themselves in front of the customers by ranking on Map Listings, organic results, and even Ad.
The second step, building. When you find a niche (plumbing, tree services, a software company, real estate…), you will need to start building your digital properties. You don’t need to be an expert in HTML or coding. It can be easy with the right tools.
The third step is now taking time to rank your lead gen website. With the site done, you need to work on SEO strategies and start dominating those Google search results. If you’re new to SEO, it stands for Search Engine Optimization.
To keep it simple, it consists of the entire process of growing a company’s visibility on search engines like Google and generating organic traffic. And remember this, local lead generation is part of the strategies.
Moving on to step four, once you rank the site, you will start getting your ROI and profits. You only need to rent it out to a local business interested in the leads the site generates. You can offer a couple of free leads to their move on with the actual pay per lead.
To review steps 1-4 above, I described it to a normal student who is building a lead gen business to help local service providers generate more calls. But replace the student with you as the business owner. And replace sending the leads to a business to simply siphoning the leads to your personal business.
By the way, fun fact, about 20% of our students in our local lead gen program are actually business owners who went through the program. And they use the skillsets we teach to generate leads for their own business.
An Example of Lead Generation: Home Advisor
You must be thinking, “if lead generation sounds so good so far, how come I haven’t seen any company?” That’s the thing; there are many out there. You just don’t know they are dedicated to it.
HomeAdvisor is one of the best examples you can find on the Internet as it is a top lead generation company that has spent millions building its brand but also earned even more zeros for this same reason.
They started small as everyone else but invested in building their brand awareness to make people who are looking for home services go to their website and find what they need. They are over 75% of people’s first choice when they need those services.
If you don’t get HomeAdvisor that much or need a refresh, users need to submit their information to request a service and get a professional or expert who can provide it.
HomeAdvisor’s job is to share your information, which makes you a lead, with local companies so they can contact you and offer the service you’re requesting. For sharing this lead information, HomeAdvisor gets paid by the companies. This happens for every single lead they send to multiple businesses.
Business owners who don’t have marketing skills or don’t even know how to have any online presence will always rely on those pages to list their services. They will save time and effort, but companies like HomeAdvisor can make them spend lots of money as leads aren’t exclusive (one lead is sent to multiple companies after all).
Using Facebook Ads aka Paid Ad Platforms: Do They Generate Leads?
They DO generate leads. If not, no one would use them.
However, you need to remember two facts:
- Paid ads or platforms can be expensive.
- They don’t generate “natural” leads.
Whenever someone sees or clicks in one of those ads, over 80% of them did it by accident or are trying to close/report it.
Why? Because they aren’t looking for those services. At least not at the moment.
What those ads do instead is interrupt their time on the platforms. Users aren’t there to find companies or businesses unless they are searching for a specific company’s user, and for that, there’s a search bar. This is why it is hard to convert them to actual customers who will show interest in the companies’ services. Also, you’re limited by a budget.
When using lead generation, everything is organic. You aren’t forcing others to pay attention to your business but rather being there when they need you. This is why Google’s organic traffic will always beat paid ads, and the reason companies continue investing in it, which is a lot cheaper as well.
What Is Local SEO?
Don’t worry… I didn’t get it at first either. Following the short explanation, local SEO focuses on scaling businesses’ visibility on search engines. However, this is only for those who serve their communities face-to-face.
What does this mean?
Experts and professionals like painters, plumbers, and dentists (but not only them) offer their services to their local customers. Why? Because they can’t deliver them unless they are located in the same area of their customers.
To make sure those businesses get more leads, you need to rank them locally by claiming the business listing on Google to place them on Map Listings. Local SEO also involves online reviews, citation management, and how you manage your entire online presence in the local area.
If you are going to bet on lead gen, you need to adapt yourself to today’s world: The Internet.
Keep in mind that although traditional channels and methods like billboards, warm calls, and pamphlets still work, they aren’t part of your tools. Whenever someone needs a service, they go to Google and search for it.
“Dentist in Miami” or “plumbing services in Orlando,” etc. And you can keep coming up with services or professionals people need and look for. Thus, you need to make sure you’re using Google to get the companies in front of their clients.
Users will always click on the first search results (those near the top), and many of them will be either Ad links (people paid to place their websites there), Map Listing, and then you get websites. Almost all of them are your goal and where you should always aim to place yourself.
Can My Financial Planning Business Utilize a Local Lead Generation Strategy?
If you want customers, you better know you need it. Following the previous explanation, lead gen is all about placing businesses in front of their customers, choosing them over their competitors.
Put it simply – it’s all about closing deals and having clients for those companies to make money. The main difference with the usual methods companies use for this is how lead generation approaches different channels to get them in the right place of the market to get customers.
Those channels are all focused on the Internet as most people are searching for products but also services across the net. The issue is that the Internet is way too broad, and businesses don’t know how to place themselves. They usually try, but they get one common result: losing money and time.
How Powerful Are Organic Financial Planner Leads from Google?
For companies looking for customers, it’s everything. For you? Pretty much the same. When you build a business with digital properties, you get to make thousands of dollars a month.
This isn’t a “get started today and get rich tomorrow” thing, but it is HIGHLY scalable, and ROI + positive results are guaranteed. Learning a fairly decent and very needed set of skills to create your digital properties and start ranking them on Google is required.
I have invested in several online businesses over the years, and if there’s something uncertain, whether you will get your ROI or not, even more than the actual profit.
However, this business moved my earnings from five figures a year to a month in ONLY passive income while sitting comfortably at home.
On my laptop. Anywhere. Anytime.
You can look at one of the first sites I built back in 2016, and it continues making me over $1.000+ every month. The best part is that I don’t need to touch it or the rest I’ve built over the years, just like this digital property.
What Makes Lead Generation SO Alluring?
Here it goes: you can work from home.
The main issue with regular business opportunities is how much you need to invest in staff, equipment, or rent to have a place to sell your products or offer your services.
We all know the hassles of traditional businesses that involve regular expenses, which are extremely high. Can you afford it? I don’t think so, and even if you can, is it worth it? Now, it isn’t only about the money. You also need to put in a lot of work, and it isn’t only during the first couple of months or years. Usually, it is as long as you continue running it.
You can save yourself those headaches and bone-breaking tasks and expenses with lead gen since it is more about generating leads with digital channels—mainly websites.
Websites can be VERY cheap to build, and with many tools online, you get to do it in a couple of hours instead of days. Any virtual or digital business is scalable and won’t need constant maintenance.
So, let’s summarize this:
- You save money in regular expenses with traditional and most online businesses as what you need is yourself and digital properties (websites).
- You can bet on passive income.
- There’s no need to hire more people to get started.
- You can generate leads in multiple industries, which allows you to work on any niche you want.
How Can I Get Started in the Local Lead Generation Program?
Anyone can start and learn. That’s the beauty of this business model. I knew nothing about SEO, Map Listing, and everything I’ve mentioned so far. It is all about learning the skills, gaining experience, and deciding to take the step.
Remember that this business model will never get old as business owners are always looking for leads. They need to do business and scale their companies. Why not do the same while helping others and still making money?
You can start with this local lead generation course highly recommended for anyone wanting to grow in the business. It is a close training that will take you through each step and make sure you are able to get your ROI, profits and take control of your life.
You will be added to an incredible lead generation family ready to help you 24/7 when asking questions on the group. Anyone is welcome who’s willing to put in the work. Click here to watch the lead gen webinar.