How can digital marketing bring value to a financial adviser?
There are all sorts of benefits to using digital marketing as a financial adviser, including:
1. Increased reach
Digital marketing allows financial advisers to reach a wider audience than you could with traditional marketing and advertising.
Thirty years ago it was only those firms with the big budgets required for national press or TV advertising who could hope to reach potential clients beyond their local area. But now, through online platforms and channels such as social media, email, and search engines, you can get yourself in front of people across the country and around the world even with a very modest marketing budget.
This increased reach can lead to more leads, clients, and ultimately, more income for your IFA business.
2. Targeted marketing
Most traditional marketing – such as newspaper ads or leaflet drops – relies on getting your message out to as many people as possible and hoping that the right kind of person happens to see it. In others words, you’re throwing a lot of mud at the wall and hoping some of it sticks.
Digital marketing enables financial advisers to refine their marketing efforts and engage with their clients and prospects in a more targeted and effective way. For example, if you are advertising pension drawdown advice, you can make sure the ads you run are only seen by people aged 50+.
3. More cost-effective
Compared to traditional advertising methods, digital marketing for financial services is often more cost-effective. Social media and email marketing, for example, can be relatively inexpensive and offer a high return on investment.
Even paid-for advertising with platforms such as Google Ads tends to give a better return than traditional advertising because you only get charged if someone shows an interest in your ad by clicking on it and visiting your website. Whereas with a newspaper ad, for example, you’ll pay a fixed fee regardless of how many people see it or respond to it.
4. Credibility
By creating and sharing high-quality content on financial topics in the form of social media posts, blog articles or videos, you can position yourself as the IFA who’s an expert in their field. This helps build trust and loyalty amongst your clients and prospects, which will ultimately result in more leads, an increase in referrals, and a greater volume of repeat business.
5. Measurable results
Back in the day, it was hard to know which bits of your marketing were generating results and which were a waste of money. There was a lot of guesswork involved and companies often carried on blindly running the same old marketing campaigns for fear that if they stopped then the leads would dry up.
But with digital marketing, you can easily get valuable insights and data on your marketing efforts. Through analytics tools, you can track and analyse the results from all your different marketing campaigns, and then optimise your digital marketing efforts and strategies for maximum impact. This is one of the other things that helps makes digital marketing for financial advisers more cost-effective than a lot of offline marketing.
3 top digital marketing strategies that work in 2023
With so many digital marketing strategies to choose from and so many agencies offering digital marketing services, it can be a bit overwhelming deciding which tactics to use and finding the time to do them all properly – especially if you’re a sole trader financial adviser or running a small IFA firm with only a few staff.
So, to help you narrow things down, here are the three things I recommend you turn your attention to first of all.
Pay-per-click ads for financial advisers
As mentioned earlier, pay-per click (PPC) ads are ones where you don’t pay for your ad to appear – you just pay if and when someone clicks on your ad. In other words, they work on a cost per click basis rather than cost per impression (also known as CPM, which stands for cost per mille, because costs are usually quoted on the basis of what you pay per thousand impressions).
The role of PPC in a social media strategy
The grandfather of the PPC world is undoubtedly Google, whose Google Ads platform is responsible for the PPC results that appear at the top and bottom of the Google search engine results pages (SERPs).
But PPC is also used as the key source of revenue for all the social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Although it’s totally free to post content to your business pages on these social networks, the reach of your posts is always going to be limited if you rely on this kind of free organic content marketing. Your posts will generally only reach those who follow you and, even then, not all of them will see every post.
So if you really want to get your social media posts in front of a big audience of prospective clients then you need to invest in some paid content. Once you do that, you can get your content pushed into the social media feeds of your ideal kind of client, based on things like their age, location, gender and hobbies/interests.
Note: Although ads on social media are often referred to as PPC ads, the reality is that the default setting for most campaigns is CPM – where you pay each time one of your ads appears in someone’s feed, regardless of whether or not they click on it.
How to implement a PPC strategy
An effective PPC strategy for financial advisers should encompass both social media advertising and also Google Ads. That way you will be targeting the top of your funnel (via the social networks) and the middle/bottom of the funnel via Google Ads (which is where you’ll get in front of people who are actively searching for financial advice).
Here are some steps to follow to implement a successful PPC strategy:
1. Define your target audience
Before you start any PPC campaign, you need to understand who your ideal clients are. This will help you create targeted ads and keywords that will attract the right people to your website.
2. Choose your platforms
As already mentioned, there are several platforms you can use for PPC advertising, including Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising (for ads on Bing), and social media platforms like Facebook/Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. When it comes to deciding which social media channels to advertise on, think about which ones will make it easiest to find the right audience. For example, if you want to target the directors of tech startups with fewer than 10 employees, you’ll find it easier to locate them on LinkedIn than on Facebook.
3. Create your ad campaigns
When it comes to Google Ads, make sure that your keywords are specific to the type of prospects you want to attract. Think about the intent that a searcher will have – for example, someone who searches for “financial adviser near me” is far more likely to want to speak to you than someone who searches for “pension allowances”.
You also need to make sure your ad copy is compelling and that it clearly communicates the benefits and unique selling points that you offer.
When it comes to social media ads, make sure you test out different images and use ad copy that speaks to your target audience and their concerns – e.g. “Not sure if you’ll have enough money to live on in retirement? Download our free budget planner.” See if you can use video in your ads too as this tends to be more eye-catching when people are skimming through their social media feeds.
4. Set your budget
Think carefully about how much you are willing to spend on your PPC campaign. Start with a small budget and adjust as needed based on the results.
5. Track your results
Use a combination of each platform’s own analytics plus Google Analytics on your website to track the success of your PPC campaigns. Pay attention to metrics like click-through rates, conversion rates, and cost per acquisition.
6. Optimise your campaigns
Don’t just set and forget. Use the data you collect to make adjustments to your campaign. This may include pausing keywords that don’t convert, testing new ad copy, adjusting your budget, and refining your target audience.
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