Claire Akin's Blog, page 34

8 Reasons Webinar Marketing Is So Promising for Financial Advisors

What if every visitor to your website spent 30 minutes with you to understand your background, what makes your firm different, and how you can help them? How would that impact your lead conversion rate? This is where webinar marketing lends a hand. 

Most of the advisors I work with have rock-solid value propositions that convert at 70% to 90% when they actually get a chance to sit down with a prospect. The problem is that their value propositions tend to be complex and tough to explain through text on a website.

That’s where webinars can revolutionize a financial advisor’s marketing. Webinars can quadruple your conversion rate when compared to email marketing. And today, new technologies make webinars easier than ever to create. I’m passionate about webinar marketing as the next frontier for advisors for a few reasons:

1. They’re an Inexpensive Alternative to Seminars

We know that seminars are effective marketing tools because so many advisors have used them to build their businesses in the past. But when you consider costs for the location, food, parking, and other expenses, they can be impractical. A webinar provides many of the benefits of a seminar, without the high costs.

2. They Make Complex Topics More Palatable

Whether you plan to educate employees of a company about the details of their pension plan or teach pre-retirees about Social Security claiming strategies, you know that financial planning topics can be dry and confusing. Webinars make complex ideas easier to understand and more engaging.

3. You Can Use Them for Client Education

Top advisors today use webinars to educate clients about market changes or keep them up to date on firm news and events. Webinars are a great way to help clients feel in the know on a regular basis without having to meet with each of them one-on-one.

4. They Are Scalable for Small or Large Audiences

Unlike seminars, webinars have the same low cost whether you’re running one for 50 or 500 prospects. Once you put in the time and energy to create a webinar, you can share it with as many prospects as you can find.

5. They Feature a Call to Action

The goal of any prospecting webinar is to help the viewer understand the problem, the solution, and urge them to take action. Your webinar may feature a free second opinion, introductory phone call, or insurance policy audit. Whichever next step is appropriate for the viewer to take can be promoted at the end of the presentation.

6. They Capture Email Addresses to Grow Your Email List

Even if webinar attendees do not take action after they view the presentation, you will retain their email address so you can communicate with them the future. As you grow your list and nurture your subscribers over time, more of them will eventually take action and do business with you.

7. They Have Conversion Rates of 20-40% (vs. 2-5% for Email)

Depending on your call to action, webinars can have conversion rates as high as 40%. Because viewers get so much information from a webinar presentation and have invested their time, they’re much more likely to take the next step than someone who only reads your emails.

8. They Can Be Used in Perpetuity

Once you create a webinar and get it approved by compliance, you can use it over and over to turn website visits into prospect appointments. I recommend creating webinars for each important niche you serve so that you can use them indefinitely to get new appointments on your calendar.

Are you interested in how top advisors are using webinar marketing to get new clients? Do you want to learn more about the easiest way to create and promote your first webinar? Register now for Webinar Marketing for Financial Advisors to find out everything you need to know about the next frontier of marketing! 

Learn more about our Monthly Marketing Package and websites exclusively designed for Financial Advisors.

About Claire

Claire Akin runs Indigo Marketing Agency a marketing firm serving top independent financial advisors. Claire is a former Investment Advisor Representative who holds her MBA in Marketing from the Rady School of Management at UC San Diego as well as a BA in Economics from UC Davis. It’s her goal to help specialist advisors target their ideal prospects with content marketing.

The post 8 Reasons Webinar Marketing Is So Promising for Financial Advisors appeared first on Indigo Marketing Agency.

How to Setup and Optimize Your LinkedIn Company Page (for Financial Advisors)

You may have a LinkedIn profile, but do you also have a LinkedIn Company Page for your business? We create and optimize LinkedIn Company Pages for all of our financial advisor clients to round out their social media presence and improve their exposure online. Today, I want to share our helpful checklist for setting up and optimizing your LinkedIn Company Page!

What is a LinkedIn Company Page?

While your LinkedIn Profile showcases you, a company page showcases your company. It’s like a profile for your firm. Anyone can follow your company page to see your updates, you can post job listings from the page, and your employees can list your company as their employer through their profiles. Check out the Indigo Marketing Agency company page now and follow us here.

What are the Benefits of a LinkedIn Company Page?

There are a few reasons you’ll want to have a LinkedIn company page.

First, it allows you to enter information about your firm on LinkedIn so that people can find your company.

Second, it will populate a logo and company name next to your “Current Position” on your profile.

Third, it allows your employees to be associated with your firm through their current position. When people click on your firm, they can see everyone who works there.

Perhaps most importantly, it helps improve your website’s search engine optimization or SEO. By listing your company name, address, and website, you give search engines another point of credibility to legitimize your business online.

If you’re a large firm, it also allows you to recruit by creating a careers section and posting jobs through the company page.

Finally, when you share content from your company page, everyone who follows your page will see your posts.

How to Setup and Optimize Your LinkedIn Company Page

Follow the steps on the checklist below to create and build out your LinkedIn Company Page today. Don’t forget to submit to compliance once you’re done. If you need help, get all of your social profiles set up and optimized for just $250. Want to learn more about LinkedIn? Sign up for The LinkedIn Course for Financial Advisors for just $39 per month for a limited time.

How to Optimize Yoru LinkedIn Company Page
Join Us for Our Next LinkedIn Webinar

The post How to Setup and Optimize Your LinkedIn Company Page (for Financial Advisors) appeared first on Indigo Marketing Agency.

Adapt Your Marketing to Build a Legacy Financial Advisory Firm

As baby boomer clients enter into retirement and begin drawing down assets, advisors are forced to look towards the future. Building a legacy Financial Advisory firm that can retain (and increase) its value for the next generation means appealing to the children of current clients and attracting younger investors.  Creating a successful legacy firm is more challenging now than ever because there are unprecedented differences between baby boomers and millennials.

The problem is that marketing approaches that worked in the past are not going to work in the future. If you have millennial children, you can appreciate the vast differences between these tech savvy kids and their parents. Appealing to the children of your clients means you need to learn to speak their language. As one millennial parent recently stated, “Our children speak Internet, and we speak it with an accent.”

Key traits of the baby boom generation include: valuing experience over education, strong loyalty, and expecting consistent hard work to produce results. Unlike their parents, millennials are achievement (not work) oriented and they value collaboration facilitated by asking a lot of questions. Millennials also expect you to use technology to quickly communicate relevant information. The traditional advisory relationship consisting of in-person meetings, paper forms and phone calls does not appeal to millennial. The next generation of wealth holders expects communication through email and text messages, paperless forms and statements as well as light-speed quick responses to their questions.

It may seem daunting, but standing out from other experienced advisors to appeal to millennials is just a matter of changing a few habits and catering to their expectations. With so much wealth changing hands now and in the near future, it pays to learn to speak the millennial language and market your legacy business to the next generation

Three ways to adapt your marketing efforts toward millennial clients:Get your tech together. 

Do whatever it takes to be on the forefront of technology. Use your website, social media presence and communication to build trust and credibility with millennials.

Ask your clients about their expectations.

It is surprising how few advisors really do this. In your initial interview, try to understand how the client likes to do business and make adjustments accordingly. How often do they expect to meet in person? How often would they like to speak by phone? Do they prefer instead to text or email? If they leave a message, how soon do they expect a return call? Your willingness to listen will go a long way toward bridging a perceived generational gap.

Establish a client advisory board.

Millennials expect an ongoing dialogue and are comfortable giving their feedback. A few times a year, hold a lunch with a select group of clients to talk about the market and ask for suggestions to better serve your clientele and  include a few parent/child teams on your board.

Times are changing quickly! Where some advisors will fall prey to new challenges, you can adapt and seize great opportunities. Your legacy business depends on making a strong connection with this group so that you can grow your practice now and into the future.

Need Help? Check out our websites for Financial Advisors. And for more access to our exclusive marketing expertise for Financial Advisors, click here to learn more about our Monthly Marketing Package and stay in touch by signing up for my weekly marketing newsletter.  If you have any questions about how I can help you boost your online marketing, schedule a phone call with me here! 

The post Adapt Your Marketing to Build a Legacy Financial Advisory Firm appeared first on Indigo Marketing Agency.

What Could SEO Do For Your Website? See This Advisor’s Before and After Case Study

SEO for financial advisors, or search engine optimization, is important because it helps get your website organic traffic every single month without paying per click. Top advisory firms that spend thousands on Facebook and Google ads pay from $1 and $5 per click to their site. With proper SEO, you can get hundreds of clicks to your site each month for free now and into the future. That’s why it’s such an important investment to make in your marketing.

But not all SEO is created equal. It’s technical and there’s a lot of money in the industry, so you need to sort through your options. At Indigo Marketing Agency, we spent a full two years developing a compliance-friendly SEO service for financial advisors.

Our goal was to create a low-cost service with a one-time fee that delivers 90% of the results possible with SEO. We’re really proud of what we’ve built and we want to share a few advisors before and after stories with you.

From Search Result #74 to #5 for Financial Advisor Bellingham, Washington

Doing search engine optimization for generic terms like “financial advisor” can be challenging because there’s a lot of competition. But we’ve built our system to work on both your website’s keywords and off your site, registering your business with search engines. These “local citations” have a powerful effect in getting your site to show up at the top of search results.

SEO Project for Financial Advisor Bellingham, Washington

Project Begins: June 5, 2018

Starting Rank #74

Current Rank: #5

SEO doesn’t work overnight, as it takes time for Google and other search engines to index the listings and give credibility to your site. We expect these results to improve over the next few months. Still, this advisor has gone to the top page of the search results and his organic search traffic has increased by over 50% per week!

Earning the #1 Spot for Financial Advisor Slidell, Louisiana

While earning the top spot on search engines for “financial advisor” in your town can be tough, it gets easier if you’re in a smaller location with less competition. For this advisor in Slidell, Louisiana, we are proud to have won the top spot! We went from ranking #15 on the second page of search results to the very top position in about three months.

SEO Project for Financial Advisor Slidell, LA

Project Begins June 19, 2018

June 19: Rank: #15

September 4: Rank: #1

What’s the Traffic Worth?

You can see from his Google Analytics Dashboard that before we completed the SEO work, the advisor in Slidell had 136 site visitors in the month of June.

Fast forward to August and he had 386 visitors to his site. That’s an increase in 250 visitors each month, which we expect to further increase as his rankings solidify. At an average cost per click of $1.50 using Google or Facebook ads, the advisor would have to pay $375 per month or $4,500 per year for that traffic. With our SEO Package, he paid a one-time fee of $975 to retain that traffic now and into the future.

What Are Advisors Saying?

How to Learn More

We only take on new SEO Projects if we can make a big impact on your site. There are a few ways to learn more about how our SEO Package may benefit your website.

Get Your Free SEO Audit Report

Our SEO specialist, Mike, will review your site and search listings to determine your SEO score and whether our package will help you. To get your website’s free SEO Audit within 24 hours, click here.

Watch Our SEO Webinar

Want to learn more about the specifics of how we accomplish our SEO successes? Watch our SEO Webinar today.

Get Started Now

Our SEO Package takes 30 days to complete and we currently have a 14 day waiting list. To get started, sign up today below. You can even fill out our survey with your site data to get a headstart on your project now!

Get Started Now for a One Time Fee of Just $975! Notice: JavaScript is required for this content. About Claire

Claire Akin runs Indigo Marketing Agency a marketing firm serving top independent financial advisors. Claire is a former Investment Advisor Representative who holds her MBA in Marketing from the Rady School of Management at UC San Diego as well as a BA in Economics from UC Davis. It’s her goal to help specialist advisors target their ideal prospects with content marketing.

 

The post What Could SEO Do For Your Website? See This Advisor’s Before and After Case Study appeared first on Indigo Marketing Agency.

Increase Your Website Traffic with Google Analytics (Webinar)

How is your website performing? If you’re like most advisors, you have no idea because you can’t see your website traffic. This exclusive webinar will show you how to view and understand the traffic coming to your website! Google Analytics is a free software to view, analyze, and interpret your website traffic and performance. Watch this webinar to learn:What is Google Analytics?How much traffic is coming to your site?What is that traffic doing on your site?How are people finding your website?Take a live tour of Google Analytics!

Register for this exclusive 30 minute webinar to learn the basics of Google Analytics today!

Need Help?

Use our excel file to track your website traffic each month.  You can learn about our Monthly Marketing Packages or schedule a Virtual Meeting with me here.

About Claire

Claire Akin runs Indigo Marketing Agency a full-service marketing firm serving top independent financial advisors. She works closely with several of Barron’s Top 100 Financial Advisors to grow their AUM using LinkedIn.

She is the author of The LinkedIn Guide for Financial Advisors and the creator of the top-rated online course, The LinkedIn Course for Financial Advisors.

It’s Claire’s goal to help independent financial advisors reach more prospects using new marketing strategies.

(Click here to watch)

 

The post Increase Your Website Traffic with Google Analytics (Webinar) appeared first on Indigo Marketing Agency.

What Is the Benefit of Joining Investopedia’s Advisor Insights?

I received terrific feedback on my blog post about the benefits of joining NAPFA, including a few advisors who decided to sign up and have already started receiving leads. Some advisors asked if there are other helpful platforms they can leverage to boost their marketing efforts. Another option I recommend is Investopedia’s Advisor Insights platform.

If you’ve ever visited the popular financial website Investopedia, you have probably noticed that the site features advisors answering financial questions from the public. You may have wondered who these advisors are and how they became qualified to speak as experts. And what about compliance?

Many of the top advisors I work with use Investopedia’s Advisor Insights to position themselves as subject-matter experts and increase traffic to their own websites. If you regularly create content like blog posts or articles and have yet to join Advisor Insights, now may be a good time to consider the benefits.

What Is Investopedia’s Advisor Insights?

Investopedia may be the largest online source of investment information, with more than 27 million unique visitors and 60 million page views each month. Investopedia created Advisor Insights to build a better experience for the 27 million users who come to Investopedia for finance, retirement planning, and investing advice.

Advisor Insights is a free content marketing platform on Investopedia that allows financial advisors to publish thought leadership articles and answer questions posted by the public.

The program is designed to spark relationships that benefit both financial advisors and Investopedia’s community of online users. Investors can have direct access to the expertise of financial advisors, while advisors can build their digital brand, increase exposure, and gain insight into the most common questions on the minds of potential prospects.

What Are the Benefits of Joining Advisor Insights?

The greatest benefit of joining Advisor Insights is the potential to leverage Investopedia’s reach to get more exposure. Through Advisor Insights, advisors can reach a new audience they may not have otherwise had access to.

Beyond publishing your own content, you can answer questions asked by investors. I find the questions posted by the public are helpful in understanding the concerns of prospects and creating ideas for your own marketing material. Here are a few recent questions posed on the platform:

What are the risks of investing in my employers’ Class A shares?I made a mistake co-signing a private student loan for my nephew. What are my options moving forward?Can I roll my Roth 401(k) into a Roth IRA?What should I do with a whole life insurance policy given to me by my parents?

Whenever you answer a question on Advisor Insights, your website URL will appear next to your profile image so you can get more traffic to your own site. This can help improve your search engine optimization over time.

Who Can Join Advisor Insights?

Any financial advisor in the U.S. can apply to join Advisor Insights and the platform is free to use without any commitment requirements. Once you apply, Investopedia reviews your licenses, registrations, designations, SEC/FINRA disclosures, and other considerations to determine your eligibility.

Is Advisor Insights Compliance-Approved?

Advisor Insights offers three types of profiles. The RIA profile is best for RIA advisors who want to answer investor questions, publish thought leadership articles, receive helpfulness ratings, and send a weekly newsletter to readers who sign up to “follow” their articles and answers.

For advisors with a broker-dealer, there are two profile options. Both are compliance-friendly, static profiles. One option allows advisors to only post compliance-approved articles, whereas the other option allows advisors to also answer investor questions with compliance-approved responses. Investopedia also has an archiving and monitoring system in place, making it easy for compliance departments to keep track of advisors’ participation on Advisor Insights.

Many broker-dealers have approved one of these two Advisor Insights profiles. Email advisors@investopedia.com to see if your broker-dealer has approved participation on Advisor Insights.

How to Get Started

To apply to become a member of Advisor Insights, start the application process here. Once you’ve submitted your profile information, Investopedia will review your application. If approved, your profile will go live and Investopedia will help set you up with an orientation call.

Are you ready to join? Please keep in touch and let me know about your Advisor Insights experience by emailing me anytime at claire@indigomarketingagency.com. You can also join my newsletter to get access to exclusive marketing tips for financial advisors by clicking here! You can schedule your free marketing consultation here. You can also check out our Monthly Marketing Package or our full service list here.

About Claire

Claire Akin runs Indigo Marketing Agency a full-service marketing firm serving top independent financial advisors. Claire is a former Investment Advisor Representative who holds her MBA in Marketing from the Rady School of Management at UC San Diego as well as a BA in Economics from UC Davis. It’s her goal to help advisors leverage content marketing to grow their businesses by embracing a true specialty.

The post What Is the Benefit of Joining Investopedia’s Advisor Insights? appeared first on Indigo Marketing Agency.

How to Market a Boring Product

Is financial planning boring? I don’t think so, you probably don’t think so, but it is almost certain that a large number of our clients and prospects think so. The perception that our industry is boring is actually a gift. If it were fascinating and easy to understand, clients wouldn’t be so interested in outsourcing the job. However, marketing a less-than-exciting product takes some extra creativity in order to stand out in the minds of potential customers. Check out these three tips on how to market a boring product in a memorable way.

Engage Your Clients’ Imaginations

The US Navy owns thousands of technologies, many of which they market to the public in order to create licensing agreements with private industry. Some of the technologies are complicated early-stage engineering ideas in the form of patent filings. However, when the marketing team for the Department of Defense made this video about the Robotic Relay System, they focused on what the technology can do, not how it is used. The viewer is free to use their own imagination to come up with unique possibilities. As a result of the video’s success, the Robotic Relay System was licensed to multiple different private companies for completely different applications.

Focus on what financial planning could bring to your clients’ lives and let their imaginations do the rest. Invite them to dream about what they would do with an early retirement, or fully funded college plans, or excess savings to travel anywhere in the world. Their imagination will create a scenario far more exciting and motivating to them than anything you could prescribe.

Weave a Story

Humans are social creatures and we relate to each other through stories. We also perceive more value in objects if we attribute an interesting story to an item. It is for this reason that great works of art can be worth millions and conversation pieces in a home create interest. Consider The Significant Object Project, an experiment that set out to prove the hypothesis “Narrative transforms insignificant objects into significant ones.” The study’s authors purchased $128 worth of junk from a thrift store and sold the items for over $3,600 on Ebay after crafting a unique backstory about each object.

This experiment proves the value we place on a compelling narrative. What is your story? Clients love a context with which to relate to their financial advisor. Think about where you came from and your core values to hone in on your story. Successful examples include father-daughter teams or San Diego’s Callan Capital, made of three brothers: Tim, Ryan and Trevor.

One very successful financial advisor engages clients with the story of why planning is important to him. Before he was an advisor, he worked as the business manager of his local art museum. Members of the museum were setting off for a trip overseas to tour the great museums of Europe when their small plane crashed, killing several married couples with small children that had not had life insurance in place. He witnessed the devastating affect, inspiring him to make a career change in order to offer comprehensive financial planning to the families in his community. These types of narratives allow prospects to understand why you do what you do and to put their faith in your services.

Find a Niche

Everybody wants to feel special. We don’t want to eat in generic restaurants, we don’t want to drive boring cars and we don’t want to hire forgettable advisors to invest our money. Clients want to feel like they’ve found the very best suited advisor for their unique circumstances. We hear it over and over, but it being all things to all people doesn’t do well. Find a niche and embrace it.

Whether it be a non-profit Christian financial planning firm, specialty planning for divorcees, wealth manager to dentists who own their practice, you must know exactly who your customers are. As a specialist, you are able to better serve your clients and understand their unique needs. Owning a niche also allows you to know exactly where to find your prospects and to market directly to them. They will feel special in your hands and be much more resilient when approached by generic competition. Another important benefit of nurturing your own niche is that clients have friends who are a lot like them. It’s easy for your clients to refer friends to your specialty practice if you are the best in your niche.

We agree that financial planning is fascinating and complex, but our prospects see it as a problem to solve. It’s up to you to engage their imagination and help them feel unique. The key is to tell your story, embrace a specialty and be the most memorable advisor within that niche. It may be challenging to put an exciting spin on financial planning, just be grateful that you aren’t an accountant.

If you want to boost your marketing success,  click here to learn more about my Monthly Marketing Package and stay in touch by signing up for my weekly marketing newsletter.  If you have any questions about how I can help you boost your online marketing, schedule a phone call with me here!

The post How to Market a Boring Product appeared first on Indigo Marketing Agency.

LinkedIn Quick Tip: How to Add Bullet Points to Your Summary

For more LinkedIn Quick Tips, check out The LinkedIn Guide for Financial Advisors, available on Amazon now!

Your LinkedIn Summary section determines how often you will come up in keyword searches and introduces people to your firm in 2,000 characters or less. But lengthy summaries can be intimidating and tedious. While you’ll want to include relevant keywords and tell your story, your summary shouldn’t read like a novel.

The solution? Add bullet points to your summary to break up your profile and focus your reader’s attention. Bullet points have been proven to increase sales in advertisements and help convey complex ideas more clearly. Well-written bullet points can:

Make your summary less intimidatingHighlight important informationFocus your reader’s attentionClarify complex ideas

Bullet Point Best Practices

Before you add bullet points to your summary in excess, let’s review some bullet point best practices. First, you’ll want to keep your list short; between four and seven bullet points is ideal.

Second, you’ll want to keep harmony within your bullet points. Try writing bullet points of the same length and use the same grammatical format.

Finally, never use sub-bullet points. They add confusion and remind me of the year I spent working for the Department of Defense, sitting through the worst PowerPoint presentations ever created.

What Should You Bullet?

Use your bullet points wisely to highlight the most important points of your summary. Because the eye is naturally drawn to bullet points, your bulleted content will get the most attention. Be sure you’re featuring what you most want prospects to know about you. Here’s one example:

At Thomas J. Dobransky & Associates, we’ve been helping scientists and researchers at UC San Diego and The Scripps Research Institute prepare for a secure retirement for over 30 years. Our firm puts our clients’ best interests first with our commitment to:

IndependenceFee-Based AdviceA Fiduciary Standard

We only take on new clients who we believe we can help. To learn more about our firm or to get a second opinion on your retirement plan, contact our office today.

How Do You Get Bullet Points to Show Up on LinkedIn?

There’s little chance you would uncover this trick unless you went searching for the answer (or read my book), but it’s actually really easy to add bullet points to your profile. There are a few options available when editing your summary section. First, you can cut and paste this bullet point symbol ● directly into your profile.
Second, you can use the built-in formatting for Windows or Apple. For Windows, put your cursor where you’d like to add the bullet point, then hold down the “Alt” key and type 0149 on the keypad, then release the “Alt” key and the bullet will appear. For Apple, press “Option/Alt” and “8” and your bullet point will appear. Give it a try!

Need Help?

I hope this Quick Tip was helpful to you. If you have questions about this topic or anything regarding LinkedIn, send me a message or email me at claire@indigomarketingagency.com. To get all the latest marketing tips, join my newsletter here. And of course, for more LinkedIn Quick Tips, check out The LinkedIn Guide for Financial Advisors, available on Amazon now! We also offer a Social Media Optimization Service to help you make the most of your social media accounts.

ABOUT CLAIRE

Claire Akin runs Indigo Marketing Agency a full-service marketing firm serving top independent financial advisors. Claire is a former Investment Advisor Representative who holds her MBA in Marketing from the Rady School of Management at UC San Diego as well as a BA in Economics from UC Davis. It’s her goal to help advisors leverage content marketing to grow their businesses by embracing a true specialty.

The post LinkedIn Quick Tip: How to Add Bullet Points to Your Summary appeared first on Indigo Marketing Agency.

How To Make The Most Of Your Referral Marketing Package

Our most popular marketing package is our Referral Marketing Package. It includes custom content, written specifically for you and posted to your website each month. We share the content by email to your network and across Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. What’s more, we include automated LinkedIn campaigns and Facebook-boosted posts.

How Advisors Grow Their Business Through Referral Marketing

Our Referral Marketing Package is designed to create more referrals by keeping you top-of-mind with your network. Why? Because research shows that people choose a financial advisor by asking friends, family, or coworkers for a referral. Referrals tend to also be better-qualified prospects and easier to close.

To make the most of your Referral Marketing Package, follow these important steps:

Stay On Schedule

Marketing only works if it’s consistent, so our team will contact you frequently to keep your marketing plan on schedule. If you fall behind, that means you’re losing out on valuable presence with your network. The most important thing you can do for your marketing is get it done on time!

Use An Online Calendar Scheduler

Our team is happy to help you set up an online calendar scheduler so prospects can make an appointment online 24 hours per day. Our advisors who use an online calendar scheduler get over 7 times the new appointments as those who do not use an online calendar scheduler! It makes a big difference if you can get your online appointment scheduler set up so that we can use it as a call to action at the end of each blog post and on your social media profiles.

Embrace A Specialty

The more you specialize, the more effective your marketing will become. By focusing your marketing, we can create more valuable content and better target your prospects. A specialty makes you more memorable so that people can refer you easily and more likely to attract qualified referrals. Embrace one or two niches for your content and we’ll create content for you to engage those niches. Examples of content we can create for your specialty include:

How To Make The Most Of Your XYZ Employee BenefitsHow Dentists Can Catch Up For Retirement In A HurryThe Biggest Financial Mistakes Architects MakeGrow Your Email List

Your email list is your marketing engine. It’s critical to always be adding to your email list to increase the size of your network. Who should you add? Everyone that you know, so when they come across someone who needs your help, they can refer you. Try to include:

ClientsReferral PartnersCPAsAttorneysReal Estate AgentsLocal InfluencersFriendsFamilyAcquaintances

Don’t be shy about adding people in your network to your email list. The people you know like to see what you’re up to and learn more about the important work you do!

Do What Works

We know which content typically performs best for financial advisors. The five highest viewed pages on our top advisors’ sites are:

Why I Became A Financial AdvisorCase Studies Of Clients We’ve HelpedSee A Sample Financial PlanOur Prices And ServicesHow To Prepare For Your Introductory Meeting

If you’re comfortable, add these to your marketing calendar so we can create the content for your site and share it with your network. These pieces help prospects feel more at ease making an appointment with you.

Make It Personal

We know from working with hundreds of advisors that the content that does best is personal. People want to do business with a person, not a brand. Your clients and prospects want to understand your story and why you do what you do. Add a few personal posts to your calendar, such as:

Why I Became A Financial AdvisorThe Most Important Thing I Learned About Financial PlanningWhat I Wish I Knew About Money When I Was YoungerMy Three Rules For Financial SuccessThe Biggest Financial Mistakes I SeeDon’t Forget About Client Education

Part of marketing is staying top-of-mind with proactive client communication in good times and bad. Any time you’d like to communicate with your audience, let us know and we’ll draft up a blog post. Popular topics include:

What To Do When The Market Is UpSteps To Take During A Market DeclineOur Mid-Year Economic UpdateAnnouncing Our New Team MemberWe’ve Moved: Our New Office LocationDon’t Forget About Medicare Open EnrollmentWhat To Do When You Turn 65 Years Old

Simply send us a quick email about what you’d like to cover, and we’ll get started!

Let Us Help Promote Your Events

If you’re planning on having an upcoming event, let us help you promote it. As your marketing content for that month, we’ll get as many RSVPs as possible by:

Creating a registration page for your eventSending a “Save the Date” emailSending a “Register Now” emailSending a “Last Chance to Register” emailPromoting across social media

Let us know 8 weeks in advance of your event, and we’ll get started promoting!

Take Advantage Of LinkedIn Campaigns

Did you know that automated LinkedIn campaigns are included in your marketing package? This means we’ll set up LinkedIn sequences that will send connection requests and messages on your behalf. Here’s one example:

Hi, {firstname},

Thanks for connecting. I specialize in helping business owners to create a better retirement plan.

You can learn more about how I may be able to help you catch up for retirement in a hurry here (Link).

If you have specific questions about your own 401(k) plan, I’m happy to answer them. You can schedule a 15-minute phone call here (Link).

I look forward to speaking with you!

To get started, we’ll just need to know who you’d like to target so we can set up your custom search parameters. Email me today at claire@indigomarketingagency.com for more info.

Get More Referrals Now

Our Referral Marketing Package is designed to keep you in front of people who can refer you business and to remind them exactly what you do and how you can help. This way, when they come across someone who needs your help, it’s easy for them to forward an email or a social media post to the referral. To make the most of your marketing package, follow the steps above to make it easy for new referrals to get introduced and make an appointment on your calendar!

If you’re not yet a client and would like to get started on your Referral Marketing Package, click here to sign up today! To learn more about how the Referral Marketing Package works, check out this video.

About Claire

Claire Akin runs Indigo Marketing Agency a marketing firm serving top independent financial advisors. Claire is a former Investment Advisor Representative who holds her MBA in Marketing from the Rady School of Management at UC San Diego as well as a BA in Economics from UC Davis. It’s her goal to help specialist advisors target their ideal prospects with content marketing.

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Ten Steps to Your Ideal Marketing Plan

Advisors ask me every day, “What should I be doing with my marketing?” The truth is that “should” is a relative term. The answer depends on two things:

What are your marketing goals?How much are you willing to put into your marketing?

Similar to attending a conference or working out with a trainer, you can expect to get out what you put into your marketing, as long as you use resources in an effective way. Because we know what works in marketing for financial advisors today, the outcome is a function of the goals you set and the time and energy you put towards those goals.

If you would like to grow your AUM by 15% next year, I recommend investing at least 5-7% of your revenue into your marketing budget. However, if your goal is to help support your referral process and double your referrals next year, putting 2-3% of your revenue will likely suffice.

Most advisors understand that marketing is important, but many have been burned in the past by marketing “experts” and expensive schemes that did not deliver results. For this reason, many want to build their marketing plan slowly over time. If you’re looking to create your ideal marketing plan, here are the most important building blocks, in order of importance:

1. A BRAND THAT CREATES TRUST

Your DBA and logo affect all other aspects of your marketing. Creating a brand that speaks to your specific niche makes all of your other marketing efforts more effective. At the heart of your brand is your logo. It’s mission critical to have an updated logo that inspires trust.

Consumer brands update their logos every 3-5 years to stay current. If your logo is cluttered or busy, get a new logo. If it’s outdated, a facelift will only cost you a few hundred dollars and will go a long way towards improving your overall brand. Cost: $400 for new logo, $200 for update.

2. A WEBSITE WITH HORSEPOWER

Advisors need a great website to compete online. But before you get too hung up on design and content, think about function. Your website should be mobile responsive, have built in “forms” that capture leads, include blogging functionality, and have event registration capabilities. This well-built engine will make your marketing more powerful and will save you time and energy in the long run.

One of the biggest marketing mistakes I see is spending thousands of dollars and months on perfecting a new website. When we look at the before and after statistics, as long as your site looks good and functions well, additional time and money will give diminishing returns. Cost: From $300 for a basic website to $6,000+ for a custom site.

3. AN AWESOME LINKEDIN PROFILE

Because Google gives preferential treatment to LinkedIn when returning search results, your profile is as likely to come up for a name search as your website. For this reason, your profile should look as great as your website and maintain your branding. Optimize each of your social media profiles for SEO and match them to the look and feel of your website. Cost: About $200.

4. VERIFIED BUSINESS LISTING ON GOOGLE

Verified business listings show up on Google Maps, include photos and business information, and can be dialed from a mobile phone with one click. This improves your website’s SEO and helps prospects find you. Registering your business with search engines is the fastest way to improve SEO and does not need to be updated unless you change your business address. Cost: $400.

5. BEAUTIFUL EMAIL CAMPAIGNS

By using an email marketing engine, it’s easy to create great looking, mobile-friendly email campaigns that include powerful features like A/B testing, targeting, automation, and analytics. I recommend MailChimp, Hubspot, or Benchmark. Cost: $0-$100 per month, depending on how many contacts you have.

6. ORIGINAL CONTENT

You’ve read to this point in this blog post because I wrote it specifically for you, a financial advisor seeking a marketing plan. If it was for a dentist or a musician, you wouldn’t be reading. I didn’t purchase it online or copy it from another blogger. The bread and butter of an effective marketing plan are quality, custom content that your prospects find interesting and valuable.

Luckily, you’re the natural expert on the financial topics your clients and prospects want to know more about. Turning that expertise into consistent content marketing is where the magic happens. I recommend at least biweekly custom articles that go out via email, blog, and social media. Cost: $400 per month.

Advanced Techniques

The above tactics are an excellent baseline to jumpstart your marketing plan. If you want to make a big impact on your business, I recommend taking those steps over the next six months. Next, we’ll cover some advanced techniques you can employ if you already have the basics in place or if you are motivated to take your firm to the next level.

7. LIVE AND ONLINE EVENTS

Webinars and live events are effective in generating referrals and prospects. I recommend a minimum of two annual live events and quarterly webinars. By promoting these on an ongoing basis, you give prospects who come across your firm a way to get to know you better. Live events also help support your referral process by encouraging existing clients to bring friends. Cost: $500-$25,000+. I’ve seen advisors have awesome events for a few hundred dollars and very expensive events that still provide a positive ROI. If possible, get partners and sponsors to help you foot the bill.

8. VIDEOS

Using video increases email open rates and keeps people on your website longer. You can expect about double the views for a video than a similar blog post. Featuring a compelling video on your homepage can significantly increase your website conversion rate.

There are two ways to do video. First, you can hire a videographer and produce professional on-location videos, which are awesome but expensive. Second, you can buy some equipment and produce your own videos in your office. If you are somewhat tech-savvy and want to create videos on a regular basis throughout the year, I recommend the do-it-yourself approach. Cost: $350 for DIY equipment, $4,000 for professional shoot.

9. WHITEPAPERS OR AN EBOOK

Lead bait encourages folks to download something of value in exchange for their email address. Featuring free downloads on your website is a great way to capture email addresses and introduce prospects to how you can help. I recommend a whitepaper, checklist, or eBook available for download on your website. Cost: $200-$2,000.

10. THE HOLY GRAIL: A BOOK

Writing a book sets you apart as an expert in your field, especially if you have a unique niche. Completing your book is less expensive than you may think and can help you get speaking engagements and media exposure. All of my top advisors have written books and successfully incorporate them into ongoing marketing. If you have been in this business over 10 years, you certainly have a book’s worth of expertise, stories, and insight. Cost: Depending on how much existing writing you can use in your book, the cost ranges from $5,000-$25,000+.

Before you invest in your marketing, take some time to think through your long-term goals and consider which pieces of the puzzle you may already have. There are plenty of effective techniques to get more mileage out of existing content, videos, and publications you have already created. Fancy websites and marketing materials are only as powerful as the traffic that you drive to them. By building a cohesive marketing framework and using existing collateral, you’ll be able to get the most out of your marketing budget.

Want to start building the ideal marketing plan?  Learn more about our Monthly Marketing Package or schedule a virtual meeting to discuss your marketing. Not ready to start building your marketing framework? Stay in touch by connecting with me on LinkedIn, visiting my blog, and watching my video courses.

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