Over the past several years, we’ve worked with many financial advisors and other financial industry professionals who are interested in establishing their identity in a crowded marketplace, and adding more high quality, profitable clients to their roster.
And very early on in the conversation – sometimes within seconds! – these prospects wisely want to know if inbound marketing should be a part of their outreach, branding and client acquisition strategy. Our answers to these questions are: yes, yes and yes.
But unlike many other inbound marketing firms, we pull back the curtain and gladly explain WHY inbound marketing isn’t just right for financial advisors and the financial industry, but is frankly a must-have. Here are the 4 key reasons:
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Establishes Brand Awareness
The financial industry is highly competitive, and virtually all prospects – including those that have been referred by a trusted family member or friend – want to do some “background research” before they reach out and send an email, fill in a contact form, or make a call.
Inbound marketing is the ideal way to provide prospects with valuable “non-sales” information that helps them learn more about a professional or a firm -- as well as obtain useful information about relevant issues in general -- and encourages them to move forward into a relationship.
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Supports Long Sales Cycles
Financial advisors and financial industry professionals can often have long sales cycles that last for several weeks, months, or even years. Indeed, it’s not uncommon for prospects to (for example) “mull over their investment options” or “think about estate planning” for extended periods of time, before finally deciding to connect with a professional and put a plan and solution in place.
Inbound marketing supports long sales cycles, because prospects can easily store and re-engage content (e.g. ebooks, whitepapers, reports, checklists, etc.) at anytime in the future. This keeps financial advisors and financial industry professionals literally just a click away when prospects are ready to learn more and move forward; even if it’s at 3am on the weekend.
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Uses Shareable Assets to Drive Referrals
A big piece of the inbound marketing puzzle is creating assets, such as ebooks, reports, infographics, and so on. Naturally, these are meant to impress and engage prospects, and usher them forward into a relationship. However, because these assets are all digital, a secondary benefit is that prospects can and will share them with their network.
For example, a prospect who is thinking about applying for a working capital loan can visit a lending company’s website and download an ebook called “Working Captial Loans: Tailored to Fit Your Business".
Days or weeks later, they could be on LinkedIn, Facebook, going through their email (etc.), and see that someone in their network – a family member, friend, colleague, or peer – is also considering a working capital loan. Since they have the aforementioned ebook sitting right on their computer, they’re much more likely to simply forward it as a way of being helpful. Here’s how everyone wins here:
- The prospect who passed the ebook along wins, because everyone loves being a valuable resource in their network. It’s probably the most coveted role there is!
- The prospect who receives the ebook wins, because without having to spend time or money, they get a useful information source that was sent to them by a trusted party.
- The lending company that created and distributed the ebook in the first place wins, because they effectively reached out to a new prospect that they otherwise may never have been able to reach – and it doesn’t cost them a second or a cent to do so!
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Tracking & Analytics
Last but not least, financial advisors and financial industry professionals can use inbound marketing to track prospect engagement and behavior, and generate analytics to help them get a much better understanding of who they need to reach, when, how, where, and why.
It’s a whole new level of business intelligence that traditionally was unavailable to all but Fortune 100 enterprises with multi-million dollar, in-house marketing departments. But with inbound marketing, it’s available to everyone: from consultants and specialists who “fly solo”, to small and mid-sized firms.
Learn More
To learn more about the advantages of inbound marketing for financial advisors and financial industry professionals, contact Leap Clixx today. We have the proven experience in this space to help you achieve the shortest path to ROI – while we ensure that you steer clear of pitfalls, costs and risks. As always, your consultation with us is free. For more on inbound marketing best practices, download our FREE eBook below:
Topics: Inbound Marketing
