The best financial advisor websites convert more visitors into qualified leads and clients
Why Don’t More Investors Initiate Contact On Financial Advisor Websites?
You might think all of these websites serve the same purposes, that is, disseminate information about firms and convert website visitors into qualified leads.
That would be a bad assumption. Most advisors do not have expectations for their websites because their websites do not produce leads for their firms. Consequently, it makes a certain amount of sense that they treat their websites like online sales brochures.
What do brochures and websites have in common? They both disseminate information about financial advisory firms and neither one produces qualified leads that advisors can convert into revenue-producing clients.
Smaller firms rent mass-produced, brochure-type websites. That makes sense when that is what they can afford. Bigger firms use custom websites and a variety of digital marketing strategies to produce leads and promote their brands on the Internet.
Without a doubt, financial advisor websites should be powerful sales tools. In fact, lead generation websites should be a firm’s most powerful sales tool. That’s because websites should be responsible for convincing investors who visit their websites to give up their anonymity and submit their contact information.
Why Investors Use the Internet
Before answering the question about top producing websites, let’s look at why investors use the Internet in the first place. They want to:
- Learn more about financial advisors
- Find top-quality financial advisors
- Learn more about specific advisors
- Initiate contact with the best advisors
They are seeking advisors or information about advisors.
An investors initial search may be for general information about financial advisors and not specific advisors. Perhaps they are rolling assets from a 401k into an IRA and are hiring their first advisor. They have heard negative comments about advisors from friends and family. They want to be cautious so step one is learn more about advisors before they start contacting and interviewing them.
Once they find advisors that seem to fit what they are looking for their next step is to conduct in-depth interviews to learn more about the advisors’ credentials, ethics, business practices, and services.
There are also two underlying reasons why investors use the Internet to find, research, and contact financial advisors.
First, they have access to substantial amounts of information about financial advisors – it just depends on how deep they want to dig: Visiting websites is easy, Google searching names is easy, checking FINRA, SEC, state commissioners, and third party databases takes more time.
Second, and this is a big one because it impacts the performance of financial advisor websites, investors can retain their anonymity until they are ready to initiate contact with advisors.
This means advisor websites have to deliver the right information, convince investors to give-up their anonymity, and initiate contact with advisors.
The Convenience of the Internet
There is a second perspective that is worth reviewing. Why are investors using the Internet to find advisors in the first place?
Why don’t these investors ask friends, family, associates, or other professionals (CPAs, attorneys) for referrals?
Perhaps they have just relocated to a new city and do not have any local relationships. Or, they do not have relationships they trust to refer them to the right professionals. There is always that underlying concern that the referral source did not do adequate research.
The Internet is a convenient alternative. It provides easy access to large numbers of advisors. It provides easy access to advisors’ background information. And, it protects the identity of investors until they are ready to be contacted.
It is also possible that investors believe they will make better decisions when they have access to the type of information that they find on the Internet.
Finding Financial Advisors
All investors have to do is enter a few keywords (financial advisor, financial planner) into Google and they have hundreds of choices at their fingertips.
Some of the choices are paid advertisers – usually brand names with deep pockets. Other choices are there because they have achieved page one visibility in the Google system.
Whether they bought the visibility or earned it, they are on page one. This positioning is extremely valuable because 91.5% of Google users do not scroll to page two. Only 4.8% scroll to page two and even less (1.1%) scroll to page three.
Some surveys show people are reluctant to click on ads unless the advertisers are brand names – most of them are.
Regardless of how they got there, page one visibility makes advisors more accessible to more investors.
What Investors Seek on Financial Advisor Websites
Based on years of experience, we know investors are seeking four outcomes when they visit financial advisor websites. They are seeking:
- Financial advisors (best outcome)
- Information about specific firms (second best)
- Information about particular advisors (third best)
- General financial information (fourth best)
Advisor websites can benefit from all four outcomes by providing the right information about their firms and advisors. General financial information can be provided in the form of eBooks and whitepapers.
Which Financial Advisor Websites Perform the Best?
- They create a positive first impression in eight seconds or less
- They deliver the information that investors are seeking
- They practice full transparency for important information
- They provide compelling free offers
- They make it easy to contact them
Why Don’t More Investors Contact You?
- Creating a positive first impression
- Delivering the right information
- Providing compelling free offers
- Making investors feel safe
Performance Measurement for Websites
- Visited the site each month
- Submitted their contact information
- Became qualified prospects for advisor services
- Became revenue producing clients
- Is the website ranking for more keywords?
- Are more of the keyword ranks on page one?
- Is the website experiencing more traffic?
- Are more visitors converting to leads?
- Are advisors talking to more leads?
- Are advisors converting more leads into clients?
How Does a Website Convert More Leads Into Clients?
It is correct that digital marketing starts on the Internet with visibility and traffic. And, advisor websites convert traffic into leads. But, how do websites convert leads into clients?
Several advisors have reported that investors are frequently pre-sold after viewing the information on their websites.
It starts on the Internet with visibility and traffic. The website is the middleman when it converts visitors into leads. Advisors are responsible for converting leads into revenue producing clients, but websites can help by creating a positive first impression.
Websites should be advisors’ best source of high-quality leads. That is because investors have learned a lot about advisors before they decided to contact them. Plus, when websites have enough influence to convince investors to contact advisors, they can also influence investors’ selection decisions.
Paladin Digital Marketing
Paladin Digital Marketing has used Inbound Marketing strategies since 2003 to produce qualified referrals for a select group of RIAs and IARs.
Paladin has packaged its unique Internet knowledge and experience into Digital Marketing and Consulting Services. No other firm provides this combination of expertise and services.