Lots of financial planners like the idea of using a newsletter to keep their clients up to date. But did you know that a newsletter can actually also be a powerful lead nurturing tool?
Lead nurturing might sound like a strange idea, but with the right strategy, it’s a powerful way to bring new prospects and potential clients on board.
In this article, we’re going to be taking a look at how lead nurturing works for financial planners, and how a newsletter can be leveraged to grow relationships with your prospects and increase conversions.
Let’s dive in.
What is Lead Nurturing?
How do you get new clients as a financial planner? There is a range of different marketing channels you might use – Facebook Ads, direct mail, events and client referrals, for instance. Yet they all pass through a particular “customer journey” before becoming a loyal client.
This journey is rarely a short, simple one. It is quite rare for someone to become a client of a financial planning firm straight away, immediately after encountering your brand or advertising for the first time. Usually, a relationship and a high degree of trust need to be built up first.
This is where the concept of lead nurturing comes in. Essentially, lead nurturing refers to your efforts to develop these relationships with your prospects over time, to the point where they are ready to buy from you or commit to becoming a client.
To illustrate this, think about dating. These days, most single people who want a romantic relationship will go on a series of dates with someone, to determine their “suitability” for this role. Rarely do people move in together or get engaged at their first meeting (although that does sometimes happen!).
Rather, it takes time to build up trust and relationship to the point where both people are ready to make a bigger commitment to one another. When you look at the customer journey for most financial planners, a similar process is going on. Of course, there is no romantic element involved but you still have a situation where two people (“brand”/”financial planner” and “potential client”) are getting to know each other and ascertain whether they are a good fit for a potential, long-term partnership.
Lead nurturing is the process of building relationships with your potential clients along each stage of their customer journey – from the first point of contact through, through to sale to post-sale.
How does a financial newsletter fit into this?
Financial Newsletters & Lead Nurturing
How can you realistically build up a trusting relationship with your potential clients?
Quite honestly, you do not have the time or resources to physically meet up with every person who might be interested in your financial planning services. So you need to provide touchpoints in other ways – i.e. through marketing channels.
For instance, a potential client might first come across your brand through a friend. Perhaps this friend saw your ad on Facebook, and tagged this person in the comments section so they would see it.
From there, they saw your promotion for an upcoming seminar on pension planning and marked it in their diary. Upon coming along and hearing your presentation and participating in the discussion, they decide that it all sounds very useful and interesting and have a nice chat with you afterwards. However, they’re not quite ready to commit to working with a financial planner just yet with everything else going on in their lives.
Where do you both go from there? Are you both no longer up for “dating” – i.e. is the customer relationship over in this instance?
It doesn’t have to be. Perhaps at this stage, you say that you understand their situation and get their permission to stay in touch via email. “I regularly send out information and tips about pensions which lots of people find helpful; I think you’d find it useful as well.”
They agree, and from here you can now provide ongoing value to them via your newsletter. By exposing them to great content which you have created, which is relevant to this prospect and helps to solve their problems, you can build a relationship of trust with them.
As they hear more of your thought leadership over time and hear your voice in the words they are reading, they feel like they are getting to know you more. They start to feel like they could confide in your about the important areas of their finances they actually really need help with.
At a certain point down the line, assuming they are still engaged you could approach this person again. This time, with a good offer they would be hard-pressed to refuse, and which carries a bit of urgency to it. Perhaps an email like this:
“Hi Gary,
I was just reflecting on how good it was to meet you and chat X weeks ago. I hope all is well and that you have found the content on pension planning helpful.
As you know, the end of the financial year is fast approaching and I recall that you said you had some unused allowances which could really help free up some money in saved tax.
My time is quickly filling up with people asking for help on this before April 6th, but I wanted to offer some assistance to you before things get too busy.
Let me know if you’d like to claim a financial consultation with me. It’s completely free and non-obligatory. At the very least, it will help you weigh up some of your options.
Kind regards,
Steve”
Concluding thought
This email might work for certain people, financial planners and scenarios. It wouldn’t work in other situations. Yet the idea remains. Your financial newsletter opens up the opportunity to generate more conversions for your business, by building up warm and trusting relationships.