6 things financial advisors can do to market effectively in 2019
Recently, Rand Fishkin released his slides from a presentation he made earlier this year. Titled “ The Next Era of Web Marketing: 2019 and beyond”, it dives into a ton of data and research that will be valuable to anyone who takes the time to read and digest it.
I put together a tweetstorm that received some attention and over 10,000 impressions. You can view it here:
There are a few pieces of content in here that deal directly with what ARIA is built for: to help financial services companies succeed in the digital era with an innovative model that can be scaled up or down.
That’s why we have so many expert resources at your disposal. We want you to have access to this knowledge without having to scour the internet for it, or spending hours on the topic.
When you think of it…that math usually works out for most firms. It takes hours to implement the information you will read below. If you charge just $150/hr to your clients, we pay for ourselves by helping you get more clients through the door.
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming. Here are the top 10 highlights you will want to know about Rand’s presentation to market effectively over the next 12–24 months. Why just two years? Because if you’ve been following along, things change quickly and you need to shift your mindset, tactics, and strategies to adjust with it.
1. There is no such thing as organic reach on Facebook anymore
This is now a pay to play game and it’s only going to get worse. When you have a ton of users and your focus of revenue is on advertising, you do two things:
- You make sure the users see less irrelevant content
- If there is irrelevant content to be shown, you make the creators of that content pay more for it
This is how the marketplace on Facebook works and why it no longer makes sense to just throw content out there. Our strategy for our clients centers around joining or creating highly engaged Facebook groups and provide tons of value. Starting small with a marketing strategy is better than throwing anything at a wall and hoping it sticks.
2. Google doesn’t care about your SEO strategy
As AI/ML capabilities continue being designed and built by Google into their search function, you will see the disparity in the image above continue to grow.
Google’s primary revenue earner is ads and they have gotten really good at it. So good that they are continuously making it harder and harder to not pay and see meaningful results.
View it from a consumer’s standpoint, you are more likely to use Google if they can give answers to “how old is Denzel Washington?” without you ever having to click a link, right? If you are using content as your key marketing tactic, this makes it harder to convert visitors or get meaningful search volume.
When someone queries a simple answer, google uses ML to pull the answers from sources without making the user go any further, then they show ads…and then they sure your amazing content. This means it’s about to get much harder to compete on generic search terms. You need to get more complex and layered with your content/SEO strategies.
3. ROI from Paid Social is decreasing exponentially
You haven’t completely missed the boat on using paid social advertising to increase your leads and revenue. You just have to be more intentional about how you use it.
It’s getting rarer that you hear stories of someone spending $30,000 on Facebook Ads and making $250,000 in product sales. It is getting especially difficult if you are in a relationship-focused industry (ex: financial services).
If marketplaces are simply supply vs. demand principles, you knew this chart above was coming. More success stories, more brands want to use the service…the more brands use the service, the more expensive success via that service becomes.
We have a Facebook Ads resource through ARIA that tells you the 9 things you need to run successful ads. It’s more than just having a good ad copy, you need much, much more to build out a campaign with even average ROI.
4. Content marketing strategy is simple, not easy
This graphic speaks for itself. If you don’t know what a flywheel is, it’s a marketing concept that says that once you get a strategy going…it feeds itself and becomes easier to turn over time.
In theory, this is the basis of content marketing. The more you do it, the easier it is for future content to be seen.
The graphic above should be the blueprint you use to create and distribute content. We have seen many firms put out great content and struggle to get prospects because they do not spend enough time on distribution strategy.
Ignore at your own peril.
5. Use an omnichannel marketing approach to get inbound leads
This is an obvious plug for ARIA. Only firms with dedicated marketing teams can pull this kind of marketing off, however, by differentiating your approach and producing high-quality content it’s a great way to increase revenue quickly.
Most RIAs are focused on Podcasts (this is very new), Instagram (pretty new), Youtube Channels, Facebook Groups, Web Searches (SEM), Blogs (SEO), Events (modern seminars)…but very few are doing all of these on the lists. This where our firm really provides value.
By keying in on where your prospects live and get their most relevant content, you can sponsor/advertise/produce content that acts as a magnet for them to engage with you. What happens if you create your own visual content network using a service like Vimsy? What if you began creating a newsletter or newspaper by using a service like HARO to find the best experts on a topic?
This kind of creative thinking is how you create a brand and marketing strategy that is different from anything else in the industry. It’s also how you bring in high-level clients left and right.
6. The hardest marketing strategies also have the highest ROI
This chart is self-explanatory. Each one of these items is on a scale of easiest to execute to hardest to execute. What’s interesting is the correlation between hardest = highest ROI and easiest = lowest ROI.
Take HubSpot's email signature generator for instance. They created a stand-alone application that would increase their lead flow to their core product. This takes time and effort, even deviation from the core mission, but recently I heard that it gave them thousands of leads.
This is an extreme example and frankly out of scope for financial advisors. However, many firms have access to tools that you can offer for free. Such as a free retirement checkup, a free student loans analysis, or a free examination of monthly cash flow.
You may be thinking, all of those take an incredible amount of time…but think again. When I ran my financial planning firm, I streamlined a lot of operations and onboarding to offer less expensive options to clients. It required some sacrificing in what I believed a top-notch firm should provide, however, it provided an easy entry point for prospects that were interested, but were intimidated by the planning process.
If your firm needs assistance in brainstorming or implementing any of the strategies above…just reach out: stephen [at] ria.agency.
