So, you’ve decided to start using digital marketing for your RIA. Congratulations! That’s a huge step toward getting awareness and visibility for your financial advisory firm.
Clicks, views, impressions and open rates are valuable analytics that you should be measuring, but the biggest question most financial advisors have is: Can digital marketing increase my AUM?
The good news is that digital marketing can absolutely be used to increase your AUM, but it takes more than publishing some blog posts and revising your website.
Read on to learn how you can turn your digital marketing efforts into new clients:
1) Stay Current And Relevant
Being “digital” means being ever-present in the digital space. It’s not enough to have a website and run a few digital ads, you have to fully immerse yourself and your firm in the digital world if you hope to use this channel as a means of increasing AUM.
Where most RIAs go wrong is in assuming that simply having a digital presence is enough to bring in actual dollars. While having those digital assets in place is a good (and necessary) start, it’s simply not enough. It’s essential to have current information on your website and social outlets. If you have a blog (and you should) make sure you’re posting frequently and with timely and relevant information.
Pay attention to financial news and tax law changes so you can comment and offer insights to your site visitors. The more you post and update your , the easier search engines will find you and ultimately so will new investors. If you’re running digital display ads, don’t wait until the end of the run to check on how they’re performing. If you check them sooner, you can see what’s working and tweak what isn’t.
If you’re using a digital marketing agency, they should be doing this automatically and tweaking on a daily or at minimum a weekly basis to ensure you’re getting the most value for your advertising dollars.
2) Use Gated Content
One of the biggest missed opportunities for RIAs looking to grow their AUM is not using gated content. Gated content is when you take a piece of custom content that you own, such as an infographic, white paper, case study, etc. and you “gate” it behind a contact form.
This form, or call-to-action, then serves as a lead-generation tool for you and your team. You now at minimum have the name and email address of that prospect and based on the content they accessed you have an idea about the products or services they could potentially be interested in.
A word of caution about gated content: If you require too much contact information and/or mark too many fields required, you may find that your number of leads is less than you had anticipated.
This can be determined by reviewing the page clicks to the landing page form and comparing those to the number of leads that actually come in.
If there is a large discrepancy, you need to review your form fields. This is because as a general rule, people are very busy and don’t have time to fill out long, tedious forms. Nor do they want to divulge too much personal information upfront.
Determine what information is absolutely necessary (i.e. name, email address, etc.) and make the other fields optional. You’ll still be getting quality leads and even more information for those who choose to fill out the remaining fields.
3) Follow Up On Every Lead
While it should go without saying, following up on every lead is an absolute must if you’re going to grow your AUM with digital marketing.
These leads can come from many places, including your website contact forms, social media (comments and private messages), gated content and referrals from current clients.
While some of these leads may not be relevant and others may not be ready to invest right away, you’re still planting a seed with these contacts. You can continue to nurture their journey through follow-up emails and marketing campaigns.
Each new client that you can convert from a lead is an increase in your AUM. Having a procedure in place to follow up with all leads is an important step that can be facilitated by a digital marketing agency or by you or your staff through the use of a CRM.
4) Understand The Benefits Of A CRM
CRM is a Customer Relationship Management platform. Essentially, CRM is software that helps you harness all of the information you have gathered on your clients and prospective clients.
Through the use of a CRM, you can identify where a client or prospect is in the sales cycle and develop messaging that appeals to them on a personal level for the stage of the buyer’s journey they are in.
This can be helpful not only for turning prospects into clients but also for nurturing those investors who have more assets elsewhere and could potentially bring those assets to your firm to manage.
The options for CRMs are plentiful, with some being simple to use and others fairly complex. Should you choose to work with a digital marketing agency you can leverage their knowledge on the best platform for your RIA.
5) Social Media
Another mistake some RIAs make while trying to grow their AUM with digital marketing is underestimating the importance of social media. Sure, social media is often used to share cat videos and photos of the grandchildren, but it can also be a valuable AUM growth tool for RIAs.
While new social media sites seem to appear daily, Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and LinkedIn (NASDAQ:MSFT) still offer the most opportunity for financial advisors to nurture contacts and grow their business. This includes a mix of paid and organic social posts and ads using the targeting tools made available within the platforms.
For example, you can target your audience based on geography, demographics, personal interests, professional information and much more, depending on the platform and type of ad. You can even include lead generation forms as a means of capturing those contacts who wish to learn more about your firm.
While this summary barely scratches the surface of the capabilities within social media to grow your AUM, the bottom line is not to discount the importance of this channel.
Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.