Marketing Yourself as a Financial Advisor Online

Marketing Yourself as a Financial Advisor Online

If you make your living as a financial advisor, you’re in good company: the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that there are around 275,200 advisors scattered across the U.S. Of course, in today’s digital age, it’s possible for clients to hire a financial advisor from across the state or across the country—which means that online competition can be fierce!

As a result, getting more clients means marketing yourself effectively online. This, in turn, can be easier said than done, especially if you don’t have much experience with digital marketing tactics.

If this sounds familiar, we’ve got you covered. Here are the basic tips you need to know for standing out as a financial advisor in a crowded online market.

Identify Your Target Market

It sounds counterintuitive, but the last thing you want to do is market yourself as an all-purpose financial advisor that works with any client. Even if you wouldn’t mind catering to a huge range of client needs, this kind of generalized marketing can be difficult to pull off. Often, it also requires an immense investment of time, money, and effort.

Instead, work on narrowing down your audience to one specific niche. This allows you to spend more time showcasing the solutions you offer for this particular audience’s problems, and it shows your clients that you have the dedication and experience to excel in one particular area. If you’re not sure what kind of audience you’d like to work with, check out some common target markets for financial advisors to get started.

Create and Optimize a Personal Website

These days, it’s difficult or even impossible to get clients without an effective website. Whether you hire someone to create one for you or you take the time to make one yourself, the right website will act as your personal storefront in the digital age. It also tends to be one of the first aspects of your business that clients will see, so make sure it’s up to speed!

Note that you’ll need to optimize your website with your target audience in mind. This means using appropriate keywords, messaging, and content. Familiarize yourself with the basics of SEO, and make sure that your website speaks to your chosen market in every possible way.

Start a Blog

One critical component of online marketing is generating fresh content—again, with appropriate keywords and content—on a regular basis. Not only does this help show your website’s authority to search engine algorithms, but it’s also a great way to prove your value to your target audience before they even reach out to you.

The right blog content can share helpful insights, provide solutions to problems, discuss industry news, and more. From the nuances of charitable giving to a walkthrough of new insurance policies, work to answer your audience’s most pressing questions. When potential clients search for answers online, they may stumble across your keyword-rich blog posts, earning you some much-needed exposure.

Note that blogging is a must for effective online marketing—whether you have the time for it or not. If your workload won’t support this type of writing work at least once a week, consider hiring a freelance writer to create posts on your behalf.

Sign Up for Social Media

Social media isn’t just for major brands; it’s also a powerful tool for small businesses. Popular career sites like LinkedIn are a popular choice for financial advisors, but don’t hesitate to set up accounts on other social platforms. The goal is to create a presence wherever your target audience spends its time online.

Just as with your website and blog, it’s critical to align your social media messaging with the needs and interests of your target audience. This allows you to post relevant messages that reach your entire network with a single click. It also gives you an opportunity to promote your blog posts, answer questions, and widen your network bit by bit.

Some platforms, particularly LinkedIn and Facebook, also make networking a breeze. Joining groups of financial advisors, local finance associations, and other relevant groups can help you meet new people, show value by making connections and answering questions, and market yourself online.

Write a Newsletter

If you’re hoping to get the most bang for your buck in terms of digital marketing, you can’t go wrong with an email newsletter. Research shows that email marketing offers an incredible ROI: $42 for every $1 spent, or 4,200%.

What’s more, a newsletter gives you a key opportunity: a reason to gather email addresses of both prospective leads and current clients. Adding a simple subscription box to your website can prompt interested visitors to hand over their valuable personal information, which gives you a reason to keep in touch.

Regular email newsletters do some of the same things a good blog will do: they answer crucial questions, provide industry insights, and promote your financial services. What’s more, they don’t need to be particularly complex.

At their simplest, you can offer a roundup of recent blog posts and relevant news. They also offer a chance to build loyalty by sending automated thank-you posts, birthday or holiday messages, and more.

Once you have your newsletter up and running through an email automation service, you can use the analytics to track the open rates and other crucial metrics. Over time, these figures can help you tweak your newsletters to peak performance.

Follow These Tips for Marketing Yourself Online

Marketing yourself as a financial advisor can be complicated, and the task gets even more complex when you try to do it in today’s crowded online marketplace. Fortunately, it’s not hard to set yourself apart by considering the basics—provided that you’re willing to put in the time, effort, and forethought.

Use the tips above, in addition to the insights from our other business marketing guides, to stand out from the crowd!

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