3 Simple Steps to Get More Qualified Leads and Clients with a Sales Funnel for Financial Advisor.
The best part of owning your own business is doing something that you love and getting paid for it. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of other less fun stuff you have to do in order to keep that dream alive. For many, that thing is digital marketing.
I get it, the digital trends, tactics, theories, and tools are always changing. It’s overwhelming and intimidating. Especially when you don’t understand a lot of the industry jargon (I’m looking at you, “SEO”).
That’s why today, I’m gonna give it to you straight. There are only three simple steps you need to take in order to accelerate growth at your firm. In short, all are part of the “Sales Funnel for Financial Advisor”.
I know, another industry term. Just bear with me.
What is a Sales Funnel for Financial Advisor?
A Funnel is the term to describe the journey a consumer takes from website visitor to a qualified lead, and then to becoming a paying client. I like to envision a Willy Wonka-esque machine that transforms stick people into dollar signs. However you want to look at it, let’s break it down:
Step 1: Get Traffic to Your Website
You’ve built a beautiful website and figuratively turned on the neon “We’re Open” sign but the traffic to your site is a little more than a tumbleweed blowing by. Just because you built it, does not ensure that they will come. There are two primary ways to get traffic to your site: Paid traffic and Organic traffic.
Paid Traffic
This is just as it sounds. You pay money and in return get traffic. The most commonly known examples of paid search traffic are Facebook Ads and Google Ads. There are tons of other great ways to pay for traffic, such as Pinterest Ads, Twitter, your industry’s niche sites, etc. For example, a paid search strategy could be a blog all by itself. And probably will be.
Organic Traffic
You want to be on the first page of Google, right? To get more organic traffic to your site, it must be really easy for prospects to find you. Above all, when they search for words or phrases specifically relevant to your website. Getting on the first page of the search engines like Google and Bing is critical to achieving that goal. So how is that done?
Firstly, to do this you need a great hosting provider and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Again, sorry for the jargon drop but it’s gotta be done. If the name didn’t give it away, essentially SEO is just implementing tactics such as on-page optimization and link building that will bump your search engine ranking. This could be anything from your site structure to the words you use in your title tags and meta descriptions. In the same vein, getting quality links from reputable websites pointing back to your website is a critical part of SEO.
Frankly, SEO can get quite complicated and esoteric (shout out to my SAT prep tutor), especially because what might work one day, does nothing the next.
I know what you’re thinking, “thanks, that was zero help.” But, don’t give up on me yet. We’re here to help and ensure your website’s SEO game is at peak levels.
Additionally, there are really cool tools out there that can save you time and make the process much easier. One such tool is Yoast. Yoast is the best on-page optimization tool out there and guess what, it’s free.
Getting attention and traffic to your website is step one of the Sales Funnel for Financial Advisor journey.
Step 2: Convert that Traffic into Qualified Leads‘
Alright, so you’ve optimized the sh!t out of your site, have mad traffic levels and you’re getting some clients every now and then. You think we’re done here? Sit back down.
You’re not exhausting every possible opportunity to get a qualified new client because not every visitor is being captured as a lead. When someone comes to your website without buying, that should be the start of a conversation, not the end. In order to keep the conversation going, capture those leads and continue to nurture that relationship.
For example, you can capture visitors’ information (e.g. an email address) by sending them to a high converting landing page or through a pop-up box on your website. In both instances, we recommend offering something of value and useful in return for their information. This could be anything from a free ebook on retirement planning, registration for a free webinar (or seminar), or subscribing to your blog. If you aren’t following yet, don’t worry; I’ll break this down by scenario.
Landing Page
You’ve just spent a pretty penny on some Facebook ads for your Financial Advisory, RIA or CFP business. But you made the mistake of sending that traffic to your website and then failing to tell them what they should do next. There was no clear path to value. Instead, send them to a landing page, which gives them a single directive.
A landing page is quite literally a page that visitors “land on”. The difference is that it has one clear call-to-action and prompts people to accomplish it. In the financial advisor example, the landing page could’ve been a sign-up page for a free consultation or access to a free PDF such as a Retirement Planning Checklist resource.
Pop Up Box
You’re a partner in a Financial Advisory Practice. More often than not, when someone comes to your site, they’re doing research and gathering information. They have no intention of making an appointment (or letting you manage all of their money) today.
Old you would’ve just let them browse through your site like a glossy brochure and then waved bye as they clicked the back button and went directly to your competitor’s website. But you’re smarter now. You now have a friendly pop up box that says something like, “Interested in the 5 simple steps in the Retirement Planning Checklist? Download the free Checklist below to help you stay on track and make sure you don’t miss anything.” or “Life happens. Plan today. Protect tomorrow. We’re here to help. Click below to Schedule a Free Consultation.”
Getting those leads is step two of the Sales Funnel for Financial Advisor.
In both instances, you captured those leads. Huzzah! And now the nurturing begins (I’ll cover that in step 3).
There are many tools out there that can help you can create really beautiful landing pages and pop-up boxes. Our favorite is called Leadpages. Most importantly, you can get an exclusive 53% discount here. We’ll even have one of our Conversion Marketing Certified Consultants help you set it up for free.
The number of things you can do with Leadpages is amazing! You can do something simple like sending a lead magnet, registering visitors for webinars, and even creating a direct registration page for a live seminar.
Building a page is super easy with their user-friendly drag-n-drop builder, numerous templates, and easy integration with your website. In addition, it integrates seamlessly with various email marketing platforms. The importance of this integration leads me to step 3 of the Sales Funnel for Financial Advisor.
Step 3: Nurture Leads to New Clients with Email Marketing Automation
We’re all here because we’re trying to get paid and buy some delicious chicken nuggets. So it’s no coincidence that this happens to be the ultimate goal of the Sales Funnel for Financial Advisor (the revenue part, not the nuggets). However, this last step of the funnel, qualifying and converting leads into clients, is also the hardest.
I’ve touched on the capturing leads so that you can nurture their buying decision, but what does this actually mean? More often than not, a prospect doesn’t make the decision to work with an advisor quickly. There’s a lot that goes into that decision. You should be there for almost every stage while also nurturing them to the next.
Here’s a quick rundown of the typical journey:
So, instead of immediately going for the hard sell, you target your leads based on their behavior and then send them relevant content at the right time. For example, if they’re just starting their journey, maybe offer the “Retirement Planning Checklist.” However, if they’re further down the funnel and already know they want to work with an advisor, then a checklist wouldn’t be relevant content. They’re at the point of choosing the best financial advisor for their needs, so perhaps you could offer a free consultation to get to know their needs better.
People LOVE to buy but HATE to be sold. Offering a free consultation, without being salesy, helps to build a foundation of trust in a possible ongoing relationship.
This also works for existing clients. In fact, your existing clients are a fantastic resource for getting new clients since they’re already familiar with your brand. They know you and any prior obstacles to working with you as their financial advisor have since been removed or lessened. Use this opportunity to let them know about other services or other products that might complement what they’re doing now. For instance, how many of your clients have 100% of their investable assets with you? As a former financial advisor, I know how hard it is to get all of a client’s assets under one roof.
This seems like a lot of complicated work, right? Well, here’s the good news.
You can automate all of this!
There are email marketing automation platforms that can do all of this for you. For example, we use and love Drip Marketing Automation Software. Note: This is our affiliate link. Sure, we have our biases, but we only use and recommend the best tools available.
Plus, Drip integrates easily with Leadpages (and many other tools). So, when someone submits their information on a Leadpages landing page or pop-up box, Drip receives and maintains all that information.
But here’s the best part, you can create automation to send that lead through a qualification workflow. As a result, you end up saving a ton of time qualifying prospects because it’s 100% automated. You will only speak with prospects that successfully go through the qualification workflow.
And, you can give direction on which emails they get and when based on their engagement levels. You can watch their entire automated Funnel journey! With all of that extra time, you can focus on helping more clients reach their financial goals.
In addition, you can gauge the effectiveness of your emails, see which emails they’re opening, what links they’re clicking, and a whole lot more. The possibilities of what you can do are almost limitless. If you’re a beginner, it’s very user-friendly and you can easily set up simple workflows, rules, campaigns, etc. But, there are also some other extremely advanced capabilities.
Quick Tip: You can take the fast track to set up your Funnel and Automation Workflow by having us do it for you. Click here to schedule a quick chat to learn more.
Next Steps
So to wrap it up, if you want to accelerate business growth, then create and implement a Sales Funnel for Financial Advisor. This means increased traffic to your site through SEO, capturing that traffic to generate leads with a landing page, and then nurturing those leads to a client relationship decision through email marketing automation.
It may seem like a big undertaking but that’s why you have us. Simply head over to the contact page and ask a question. We’re here to help!
You can also check out Financial Advisor Funnel 7-Point Checklist to Getting 10x the Results.
Talk soon,
Kathryn
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