RIA's and Financial Advisors Need Inbound Marketing

Why Inbound Marketing Will Be A Necessary Investment for Financial Advisors And RIAs

Every financial advisory firm should invest in digital and inbound marketing as part of its 2022 budget. They should make this commitment because they believe the Internet will impact the financial service industry the same way it has impacted numerous other industries. 

They also know delaying this investment in digital marketing is no longer acceptable because they know the longer they wait the more expensive it will be to catch their competitors.

2022 will be the year a lot of financial advisors get in the game by investing in their digital and inbound marketing strategies.

Why will so many financial advisors commit to digital marketing?

Is Outbound Marketing Really Dead?

Yes, outbound marketing really is dead if you measure it based on results. Hundreds of cold calls to reach a few disinterested investors are no longer a good use of a financial advisor’s time and money.

Outbound marketing worked in the past because investors had to talk to financial advisors to learn more about them. Investors are no longer limited to choosing advisors who contact them. Instead, they can use the Internet to find and research advisors and maintain their anonymity until they are ready to initiate contact. 

You might say the power has shifted to investors and the Internet has made this possible. This is true for a lot of industries. Salespeople are not as important as they used to be when they controlled more information.

Why Are Financial Advisors Betting On The Internet?

You are making three big bets if you choose to do nothing. You are saying:

• Growth is not important for your firm to be successful
• The old ways of marketing financial services will make a comeback
• The Internet will not impact the ways investors find, research, and contact financial advisors.

Doing nothing is never a viable marketing strategy. We hear this all the time when advisors tell us their main source of prospects is referrals from current clients, friends, and family. This is not a strategy. This is waiting for the telephone to ring and what happens if the phone does not ring?

All financial advisors have to do is look at the ways most people make buying decisions for services and products. Step one is to find what they are looking for on the Internet. Step two is to research what they find. Step three is to initiate contact with their best choices. 

What Determines Digital and Inbound Marketing Success?

There are three key metrics that measure the success of a financial advisor’s digital and inbound marketing investment. 

One metric is brand visibility on the Internet so a firm is easy to find. This is the top of the sales funnel when investors are looking for financial advisors on the Internet.

The next metric is traffic to financial advisor websites. What investors find on the Internet has to compel them to visit the advisors’ websites or a landing page that captures their contact information.

The third metric is the conversion rates that are produced by financial advisor websites. At a minimum, an acceptable conversion is 2.5%. That is, the advisors’ websites produce 2.5 leads per 100 legitimate visitors.

At the bottom of the funnel, the results are the sales successes of financial advisors converting visitors into leads, leads into prospects, and prospects into clients.