Practice Management
It doesn’t take a digital marketing whiz to understand the importance of having a website. In today’s world of online comparison shopping, consumer research and validation, it’s all but impossible for a financial advisor’s practice to thrive without one.
A website can be a digital billboard for your business, helping you establish your brand and communicate with clients more efficiently. Perhaps most importantly, a website can create an experience that inspires prospective clients to take the next step and request a meeting with you.
There’s a difference, however, between having a website and using your website to drive investor interest and online leads. A website that is used to its maximum potential — with a strong brand message that speaks to an ideal client and anticipates their specific needs — is more likely to bring qualified prospects to your practice.
How can you tell if your website is reaching its potential? Start by looking at it from the point of view of a new user: Is your messaging clear? Is there a clear journey to get to the information you want them to act on? You might also consider user testing, which could be outsourced to a professional or done by unbiased volunteers among friends and family. Ask them what types of questions they would expect to find answers to on your site. How easily do they find answers? Do they understand what you do and whom you serve? Most importantly, would they be inclined to schedule an initial meeting?
Regardless of where your website stands today, here are five strategies that can help drive digital business to your practice.
Think of your website as an elevator pitch. What’s the immediate takeaway? Digital marketing agency FMG Suite, which works with financial advisors to build more effective digital destinations, suggests performing a “five-second test.”1 If someone spent just five seconds on your website, would they have a clear and immediate understanding of your business and what you offer? Would ideal prospective clients recognize themselves immediately? If you are not sure, consider whether your site includes these successful attributes:
Having a content strategy can help drive traffic to your practice’s website and create more engaging social media profiles, and it can help you answer your clients’ frequently asked questions. But content does not have to be just articles or blog posts. There are other tools that can help your website both stand out and draw prospects in — for example, infographics, quizzes, surveys, downloadable reports, newsletter sign-ups and live webinars. These alternative content types can help you educate and capture data from a prospective client, while giving them something completely unexpected or unique.
One content tool that can be highly effective is a video. According to a 2022 survey of website managers who use video by design company Render Forest, 78% got more traffic to their website after adding video, 83% generated new leads with the help of video content, and 44% of users increased their sales. In another example, marketing guru Neil Patel says a prominently displayed video2 helped to double conversion rates for his website’s already high-performing landing page.
The persuasive power of video
A recent study asked website managers for results after adding video to their marketing efforts.
Video can be extremely persuasive, putting a face and voice behind the business and the brand. It is an ideal vehicle for storytelling, and can help touch the emotions of your ideal prospects by addressing common pain points. Video can also help establish trust and reinforce your authority, which is a crucial component in search engine optimization (SEO). Additionally, with attention spans on the decrease, videos can be easier to consume than articles. They are easily watched and shared by mobile phone users.
Speaking of smartphones, they make it easy for to create video at relatively no cost. But if you are looking to improve the quality of your production, there are programs you can use to create videos with a professional look and feel. InVideo can help simplify the process of editing and presenting a broadcast-quality product. Render Forest offers a free online video maker tool, and there are many other user-friendly editing tools to consider (some at low or no cost), including Flixier, Descript and iMovie. And don't worry if you're not an on-screen expert. The important thing is to create an authentic message that fosters a connection with your ideal client.
When you post the video to your website, remember to add a link to the transcript. This helps search engines find and rank your video content.
A call to action (CTA) is a prominently displayed link or button offering users to take a next step: Learn More, Find Out How, Buy Now and so on. The CTAs on your website can function as a sort of road map that helps guide users through the decision-making process. Effective CTAs can help draw users closer to converting from a website visitor to a prospect or client.
What makes a CTA effective? First, it should be easy to find. Including big, bold CTAs throughout your site encourages deeper engagement with your web pages. The language should feel personal and active. For financial advisors, effective CTAs might include: Request a meeting, Reach out with questions, Talk with an advisor, or Schedule a free consultation. Words like “free” or “complimentary” can compel users even further. For example, if your goal is to build an email list, you might use a newsletter sign-up or offer something more robust in return for an email address (for example, a guide to paying off debt or a free college savings roadmap).
A call for every action
CTAs can be designed in many different ways and placed throughout the page, depending on what you want your prospective client's journey to look like.
Your CTAs should also make it easy for web users to take the next best action. There are many potential ways to design a CTA — from buttons and banners, to contextual links, to fillable forms, pop-ups and slide-in boxes. The type you choose should fit the desired user action. For example, a “click to call” feature or meeting scheduler can help automate that experience for the prospective client.
As you may already know, a customer relationship management (CRM) system can be a great tool to help you manage client data and create a seamless experience. It can also help you track your online marketing activity and new leads. Integrating CRM software into your website can help you further optimize your digital strategy with a complete view of who interacts with your website and how they behave. This allows you to cultivate leads over time and even segment clients according to user data.
Many of the most popular CRM software suites for advisors, including Salesforce, Redtail and URGU Financial, offer digital marketing services or pair with other third-party software integrations that do.
Capturing the activity on your website and collecting information about what visitors are doing requires web analytics: a data-based view of your website’s performance. Which pages are bringing them in? Which pages are they spending the most time on? Where did they come from before they got to your site? Where do they go when they leave? Analytics can help you understand all this and more, and help you segment your data and optimize your site over time.
For example, you may want to compare total page views to average page views per visit, or compare new visitors to returning visitors. You may pay attention to the time spent on the page or consider the “bounce rate” — calculated as single-page sessions divided by total sessions. A low bounce rate (around 30%-50%) can tell you that visitors stay and spend time on the site; a high bounce rate (generally greater than 70%) can indicate that users are viewing one page and navigating away quickly. You may also want to look at individual page views, to see which pages are getting the most traffic. Your most popular pages can be leveraged to boost your other content by adding hyperlinks to related articles.
Which metrics to watch?
A metrics dashboard will provide a lot of website user data. Here are a few examples of what you might want to pay attention to.
Google Analytics is a great tool for web analysis. It’s a dashboard that can be added to your website through a simple plug-in, and it tracks web data in real time, including conversions, social media, mobile and video performance, and multichannel reporting. The standard version is free, and in terms of functionality, it’s hard to beat. Many content management systems (including WordPress, Squarespace, Drupal and GoDaddy, among others) support Analytics as part of their platforms, but you can easily create a Google Analytics account and add your website to it. Alternatively, your content management system may have similar built-in analytics. For example, users of Adobe Experience Management have access to Adobe Analytics.
Depending on the level of enhancement your website needs, you may decide to work with a digital agency like FMG Suite, Indigo Marketing Agency or Paladin Digital Marketing, among many others. Keep in mind, however, that the digital space is democratizing. Your ideas, and the ideas and opinions of your team, friends and family, could be just as valuable. If you have the time, and even a fraction of the skills to build a website in-house, experimentation can help you find what works for you.
Website checklist
Does your website include the following?
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