Digital marketing strategies for financial advisors

7 strategies to make digital marketing more effective for financial advisors

Advisors have many options when it comes to marketing their business online. The key is choosing one that can maximize client recruitment and lead to achievement of a firm's strategic goals.

Over 40% of advisors landed more clients via social media marketing and nearly one-third plan to increase their website spends in 2022, according to a survey by Broadridge Financial Solutions. Having a defined marketing strategy is associated with more positive business outcomes, the study found, yet only 28% of advisors have one in place.

Read: In scramble to comply with SEC marketing rule, advisors wrestle with ambiguities

For Lou Calabrese, chief marketing officer at the wealth management firm Robertson Stephens in San Francisco, social media, email marketing and a website are the main digital marketing tactics advisors have to invest in. Calabrese said advisors should be spending around 10% to 15% of their time on marketing strategies.

"This is your way of getting new businesses in the door other than the traditional waiting like referrals, introductions from clients and centers of influence," Calabrese said.

The survey found that 30% of advisors plan to increase marketing spend over the next 12 months, especially on websites and social media. Currently, advisors spend around 3% of their business revenue on marketing, while chief marketing officers report an average marketing spend of 8.7%.

"It's a loop," said Rebecca Hourihan, founder of 401(k) Marketing, a marketing firm in San Diego for retirement plan advisors. "Advisor shares an email, social media post or content marketing, and then people like it, comment and share it and that loops back to that advisory firm in the form of referrals, happy clients, more favorable introductions and easier time to meet in person."

Read: Marketing trap: SEC warns new advisors of their compliance shortcomings

Scroll down the cardshow to see tips and tactics from marketing experts on how financial advisors can grow their businesses.

Align with the business

An effective digital marketing strategy starts with looking at the firm's annual goals, according to Calabrese. The marketing needs to be designed with the target market in mind — which industry, clientele or area the advisor is looking to tap into or expand its business. That would determine if the firm should invest more in specific social media campaigns, other digital platforms or even on more traditional marketing, such as events.

There are many options out there and advisors don't have to adopt all of them at once. Gregory Banasz, chief marketing officer at Steward Partners Global Advisory in New York, said it's important to pick a platform that better suits your interests rather than just focusing on results.

"Some people don't like social media, but they like doing podcasts," Banasz said. "Make sure you have bandwidth to do this because it's not something where you want to plug it and forget it."

Create a digital image

When it comes to stepping into the digital world, it is important that advisors showcase themselves in the best way to clients. When searching online, the client needs to find only professional photos of the advisor and a good summary of the firm, detailing the advisor's experience and how it can help clients, Hourihan said.

"A lot of times when advisors are setting up their LinkedIn profile, they skip the banner, the 'about us,' the background and experience section. Take the time to fill those out," Hourihan said. "You want to make sure that whatever is showing up on the internet is the best reflection of you."

Know the audience

LinkedIn is the social media channel for professionals and one all advisors should consider. But there are plenty of other platforms out there. Instead of signing up for all of them, advisors should know which are aligned with their target audience .

LinkedIn might be the best platform for a firm that is more focused on clients that are business owners, entrepreneurs or executives. Twitter is good for those who want to send out a lot of company or market news to clients. A retirement advisor should dedicate their time to Facebook, and advisors looking for a younger clientele should look into Instagram, Calabrese said.

"The way social media starts to become advantageous to teams or financial advisors, it's when they learn how the algorithms work," Banasz said.

Diversify and customize content

A digital marketing strategy is nothing without content. An email marketing campaign, a social media post or a newsletter all require creating a content plan that's engaging to new or existing clients.

The content can vary from news about the firm, celebratory events, the market or insight pieces on trends, investments and client management. The most important is that advisors keep consistent on creating content, Banasz said

"Some people send email updates on a weekly basis or a lengthier newsletter at the end of the month or the end of the quarter," he said. "Whatever frequency you want, consistency of content is key."

Diversifying the sources of content can also help amplify its reach. Hourihan said the same content should be shared on various platforms. A blog post on the website can be pushed out by email marketing and at the same time shared on LinkedIn.

"You can get a really strong distribution strategy on a piece of content that sits in the middle of your digital marketing," she said.

The content should also be customized according to the audience.

"If you send me an article about Social Security and I'm 10 years from retirement, I'm deleting your email," Calabrese said. "If you don't have that personalization, leveraging your data, it's going to look like one voice is speaking to everybody."

It's important that all content is created with search engine optimization, or SEO, in mind, which makes it easier to be found on Google, for example. Hourihan recommends pretending to be the ideal client and searching Google keywords to see if your business shows up or what type of content is on top.

Adopt new technologies

Digital marketing is also all about keeping up with new technologies and user behavior. For Banasz, advisors shouldn't rule out, for example, video content as it tends to dominate the social media landscape.

"If someone's looking for help with estate planning or looking for insurance planning, and you're running a clip or a video short with that type of content, you can show up in their search results," he said.

There are also emerging technologies that can be useful for advisors, such as Dynamic QR codes. The technology can be integrated with websites or social media and generate trackable data, such as who is scanning and what the most popular content is.

AI tools such as ChatGPT can also help with coming up with content ideas, according to Calabrese. Advisors can research what's trending in personal finance or certain topics and rules going on in the government that could lead to writing an article about it and sharing it in social media.

"We're just skimming the surface, but these new AI tools can help with content ideas," he said.

Track the data

All the digital platforms provide important data that shouldn't be overlooked. Whether it is a social media, blog post or newsletters, advisors have access to the number of users engaging with the content, how frequently, what time of the day, etc.

All this information helps determine if the audience prefers, for example, more personal content or market news. That can be useful when evaluating which strategy should be expanded and which are not producing the desired results.

Evaluate the strategy

Tracking and reevaluating are two important pieces of the marketing strategy.

When adopting a new digital marketing plan, advisors should expect to wait at least three months to evaluate it and decide if it's successful. Experts don't recommend shifting to a new strategy after a short period, but instead, making some adjustments month to month. The changes can be as small as improving the SEO and rewriting blog posts, or shifting the focus to one type of content instead of another.

"Many times when advisors think about digital marketing, they immediately feel very overwhelmed," Hourihan said. "But the first [outcome] that you notice is your clients happier because you're communicating better and your team is working better together."