The amazing thing about most financial services is that you can scale them to infinity. Companies are especially good at inventing new services and upselling. This makes customers extremely valuable as a business can get enormous lifetime value from each one of them.
However, as with other industries, acquiring these customers is usually tricky. Large organizations invest millions of dollars each year in marketing as one of the better ways of increasing their profits. Of course, the optimal channel and approach vary based on the company’s size and services.
Promoting consulting services is completely different from advertising bank products. Large institutions usually rely on mass marketing, where TV, billboards, and the internet reign supreme. On the other hand, consulting services require a direct approach, where the advisor should leave an impression of a reliable expert.
In this article, we will focus on individual consultants analyzing the 6 best ways they can reach new clients.
Table of Contents
1. Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Word-of-mouth marketing remains the best method for advertising small agencies and individual entrepreneurs. Like with any other service, people are looking for reliable professionals who will keep their best interests in mind. In that regard, choosing a financial advisor is no different from choosing a hairdresser, dentist, or lawyer.
Despite what some people might think, there are several things you can do to improve word-of-mouth marketing. If we were to generalize, a person who is currently using your services is more likely to recommend you. Alternatively, if you have the same client for a while, there’s a good chance they’ll eventually suggest you to other people in their midst.
You should make your client think about you all the time. Send them birthday emails and congratulate them on other joyous occasions. Of course, you can always directly ask them for a recommendation. Although some advisors are too proud to beg, it’s an approach that definitely works.
2. Newsletters
Newsletters remain one of the least-intrusive ways of converting leads into clients. The great thing about these digital documents is that you’re providing actual value to the readers. As a financial expert, it makes sense to share the latest news with contacts from your mailing list.
Nowadays, a lot of companies send unsolicited newsletters. By collecting addresses from anyone who visits your website, you can create a massive list. However, unless they explicitly asked for these messages, you can rest assured that your conversion rate will be rather low.
Although the creation of newsletters is a fantastic approach, most consultants don’t know how to make them. Even if they have extensive financial knowledge, they simply don’t know how to put things into words. If that is the case, financial advisor custom client newsletters might be the right thing for you.
3. PPC Campaigns
PPC refers to Pay-Per-Click. This is a unique type of web advertising where a company or entrepreneur bids on social media or search engines. If you beat the competition (that is, outbid them), your message is shown at the top of the Google search engine or on a specific social platform.
Like with everything else pertaining to digital marketing, you’ll get much better results if you know what you’re actually doing. PPC campaigns can be expensive, especially if you’re targeting the wrong demographic group.
Perhaps the best thing about this approach is that you’re only paying money when someone clicks on your ad. In theory, each one of these visitors should be a potential lead. It also helps that your ad will be placed immediately upon paying for the service.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the best approach for branding. Furthermore, the benefits will stop as soon as you stop paying for the ads.
4. SEO Campaigns
SEO is an alternative to PPC. This acronym stands for Search Engine Optimization and refers to a process where you make a website more search engine-friendly. In other words, your task is to improve website speed and architecture, make it better for mobiles, add a blog section, and improve its content.
By doing all these things, your pages become better for users and, thus, better for search engines. As such, you’re more likely to be featured on top spots in Google, Bing, and Yahoo!
The potential traffic you can get from the search engines is simply enormous, overshadowing all other approaches. But getting there is a completely different story. Search engine optimization takes a lot of time, and there’s no guarantee that you’ll reach your goal.
Still, if you’re looking to improve your branding efforts, it doesn’t get better than SEO. It’s a long-term approach that shows results after several months (if even then).
5. Influencer Marketing
Over time, influencer marketing has become one of the pillars of digital marketing. Although companies have always employed athletes and movie stars to advertise their products, the rise of social platforms allowed common people to make enormous money from these celebrity deals.
As you well know, influencers are social media stars who have enormous followings. One word from their mouth can make or break a product, so companies started employing them to reach large audiences on Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms.
The best thing about this marketing approach is that it allows you to target a demographic group with specific needs. People following influencers usually have similar interests making these campaigns more focused. For example, a financial adviser cannot go wrong by advertising through a financial influencer.
6. LinkedIn
LinkedIn has always been a lucrative platform for business people. It’s extremely popular among jobseekers and headhunters, but you can also benefit from it as a financial advisor. In fact, approximately 90% of consultants use this platform for marketing.
Social media works similarly to other networks. You create a following and start spreading your message. If you manage to reach the status of influencer, marketing becomes a breeze. No matter what you’re doing, you should always make sure that you’re providing value so that the algorithm shows you to more people.
Aside from gaining organic traffic, you can also use LinkedIn to directly pitch potential clients. Just make sure to get the paid version!
