Financial advisers are understandably interested in online lead generation, particularly in a UK environment where cold calling on pensions and other areas is becoming more and more restricted.
However, how do you actually leverage the digital sphere to attract new clients to your business? Moreover, how do you do this without breaking your marketing budget?
As a digital agency working mainly with financial advisers, we regularly help IFA startups and financial SMEs answer this question. Ultimately, there are lots of potential routes open to you.
Here, however, we’re going to share one approach that you might want to try:
- Design a “lead magnet”
- Put this onto a well-designed landing page
- Link this up to your email marketing software
- Promote your lead magnet and landing page via a Facebook Ads campaign
If you are confident with coding and the software mentioned here, then you might want to give things a go yourself. If you need help, however, feel free to contact us for some free, friendly advice.
#1 Design Your “Lead Magnet”
If you want people to subscribe to your email list or reach out to you, then you have got to make it worth their while. A “lead magnet” is something of value that you can offer to potential clients, in exchange for their contact information.
For instance, if you are a startup IFA looking for HNIs in your local area or region to join your books, then what kind of “freebie” could you offer that they would genuinely stop to consider?
One idea might be to offer a free webinar on how to start a pension, or a free eBook on how to save money and start budgeting effectively.
Once you have nailed down your lead magnet, you then need to design it. Fortunately, you do not need lots of creative skill or expensive software to do this.
For instance, if you are offering a free eBook then you could design this on a free programme like Canva.
Or, if you want to host a free webinar then a free service like Google Hangouts or Skype could work.
#2 Design Your Landing Page
With your lead magnet established, you will now need to design a landing page which advertises it. This is where web traffic will go in order to find out about your webinar or eBook, and sign up for it.
Again, luckily you do not need to be a professional web developer with lots of experience to make this work. There are some great “build-it-yourself” landing page platforms out there such as Lead Pages and Lander, which can get you set up very quickly for as little as $25 per month.
There are some important things to bear in mind when designing your page, however. You should use effective calls to action on your landing page. You will also need to quickly and clearly explain who you are, what you are offering, and how it will benefit your audience.
Speak directly to people’s needs and pain points. Speak in language they understand without coming across as patronising. Also, make sure your page is well laid-out and makes good use of imagery and white space so that it is easy to use and attractive to the user.
#3 Link Your Page to Your Email Marketing Software
Ideally, when your target market visits your landing page you will want them to fill out the contact form in order to book their place on your webinar, or to download your eBook.
When they fill out the form, part of the subscription/sign up process should involve getting hold of the prospect’s email address so you can send them the link to the webinar/eBook. In the process, you can ask them to sign up to your email list.
This means that after they have received the freebie, you can contact them with your paid-for services, with the aim that they become paying clients.
To set this all up, you will need to link your landing page to an email service provider to store the prospects’ data. Here, there are lots of low-cost, effective services you can use such as MailChimp or SendInBlue, which contain some great marketing automation software you’ll need as well.
Make sure you explain the sign-up process clearly on your landing page, and that you follow an effective “double opt-in” process when you get people to subscribe. That way, you minimise any data protection issues and unsubscribe rates.
#4 Promote Your Page & Lead Magnet Via Facebook
So, you’ve almost set everything up for your lead generation campaign. With the above infrastructure in place, it’s now time to start pushing your page and lead magnet out to your target audience.
Facebook can be a great place for financial advisers to do this. First of all, you can clearly define who you want to show your offer to using the Facebook Ads Manager. This is incredibly powerful, since you can not only target your audience by age and location, but also using criteria such as your audience’s interests, income, industry and job title.
Secondly, using Facebook Ads is actually quite low-cost if you set everything up correctly and keep on top of your spending. For instance, you could keep your daily spend at around £5 a day, which means you could limit your budget to £150 the first month, allowing people to click on your ads to access the lead magnet you are offering.
Using the Facebook analytics, you can also monitor your campaign’s performance to find out which ads are working best, and also address any issues that might be coming up in light of user behaviour.
Moreover, if you also split-test your landing page (i.e. show different versions to different users), you can find out which variation of your content produces the best conversion rate.
Most landing page platforms have built-in analytics tools to let you do this, but you can also use Google Analytics to measure this performance as well.