There was a time when your first interaction with a new prospect or lead would have likely happened over the phone or perhaps in person. Your first interaction would have been a two-way conversation, which would have allowed you to exert some influence and shape their perception of you.
Today, your prospects are likely to have their first interaction with you online, and you may not even be part of the conversation. Think about your own major purchases and business relationships. What’s the first thing you do? If you’re like most people, you check out the vendor’s website.
Your prospects, leads and clients are no different. They’re researching you online early in the process, perhaps before you even have a chance to speak with them. In fact, they may base much of their decision to move forward on the appearance of your website.
If you haven’t invested much time, energy or resources into your site, you may be allowing your prospects to make early impressions of you that just aren’t accurate. The good news is that you can easily change the situation. These days, a website refresh isn’t costly or time consuming.
-
Registering in local searches.
While you may have some clients that live in other states, chances are good that most of your clients are in your local area. That’s a critical point to understand when it comes to marketing yourself online.
Many people search for local results. To come up in local search engine results, you often need to be registered with Google’s local search directory, as well as Bing’s and Yahoo’s. Additionally, make sure the relevant local terms are on your website so the search engines will pick them up when they index your site.
-
Submitting to Compliance.
Just like all your other marketing materials, your website and all of its content will need to go through compliance. Many advisors put their initial site through compliance, but then don’t establish a process for submitting new content.
Remember, your website is an ongoing project. You’ll be adding content regularly. Work with your compliance department to streamline the content compliance process. If there’s already a process in place, make sure you understand it and use it properly so your content can be posted.
-
Track Your Success
As a financial advisor, you know how important it is to review performance. That’s true with your website too. There are a wide variety of tools out there that can help you measure your site’s traffic, social presence, and overall effectiveness. You can then determine what is working, what isn’t, and where to make changes.
-
Connect Your Online Presence
You’re probably already active on LinkedIn and maybe even Facebook and Twitter. Your website should be the hub of all of those activities. Make sure your website and social media accounts are connected via social buttons. Also, make sure your blog posts and other content can be easily shared on social media.
Similarly, include links back to your website in your emails. If you do that, you’ll draw visitors into your site. You can also use tracking software to determine how many links are clicked and whether your emails are effective.
-
Have A Call-To-Action
Finally, your website should have a purpose. Maybe it’s to get people to sign up for a seminar. Or perhaps it’s to get them to do a phone consultation with you or even schedule an in-person meeting.
If you want a certain action to happen, you have to make it easy for your visitors to take that step. Put big, obvious calls to action on your website and in your content. Make it simple for them to request information. Try to use your content to drive them towards a next step. If you do that, you’ll actually see your website become a lead generator, not just an information source.
Your website is one of the most powerful marketing tools you have at your disposal. Unfortunately, far too many advisors fail to see its potential and neglect their site’s functionality and appearance.
Don’t make that same mistake. Review your website today and take steps to implement these pieces of advice.
Feeling a little overwhelmed by all of this? No problem. CreativeOne offers digital marketing services to help you optimize your social media profiles through our digital marketing program, Social Media Elite. Our team uses proven strategies and best practices to ensure your plan is completed in a timely fashion.
We also offer digital marketing solutions. Our digital marketing experts will look through your website to determine if, and where, there are opportunities for improvement, before developing a personalized and detailed plan to make it more than an online business card using custom websites, lead capture programs and an on-site SEO audit. Digital marketing can be a time-consuming endeavor, but with CreativeOne’s help, our team will ensure your social media profiles are optimized.