All financial firms want to bring in new customers and clients, yet lead generation can be a tricky task. Especially when it comes to consistency and quality.
New data protection laws such as GDPR are also making it harder for financial advisers and other businesses to leverage old marketing tactics – such as buying email lists full of “pension leads.”
If you’re going to run a successful lead generation infrastructure, then you’re going to need to apply some principles from your own industry (financial services) to grow your success rate. In particular, you will need to consider “diversifying” your marketing channels, so you are no longer reliant on one single source of leads.
In this article, we’ll be sharing 5 tips to help you increase the volume and quality of leads for your financial firm. This is what we live and breath here at MarketingAdviser, so if you’d like to discuss this or your own digital campaigns in greater detail please get in touch to arrange a free, no-commitment consultation with a member of our team.
#1 Refine your CTAs
Calls-to-action (CTAs) usually take the form of buttons on your financial website, directing the user to the desired course of action – such as “Buy Now” or “Sign Up”.
The problem is that a lot of financial firms have very dull, uninspiring or unattractive CTAs which do little to stir the audience to engage. Buttons such as “Read More”, for instance, can be helpful but they don’t really describe any value that’s being offered.
Many people are also unmoved by “Subscribe to our newsletter” since their inbox already gets bombarded with lots of emails they don’t need.
Instead, try and convey exclusivity, value, urgency and rarity in your CTAs. In other words, really give them a reason to want to part with their contact details, in exchange for something they want.
#2 Hone your value proposition
This point is closely tied with the one above. Not only do you need attractive CTAs, but you also need to make sure your value proposition is actually …valuable.
In other words, are you offering your website visitors something they really want – and are you communicating that clearly to them? Or is it obscured by a lot of jargon which they don’t understand?
One example springs to mind. We spoke to an investment manager earlier in 2019, who wanted to attract more enquiries from wealthy investors via their website. They had tried digital marketing before, and it “hadn’t worked for them”.
When we looked at their set-up, it was clear that the agencies they had worked with previously had not done anything tactically, or technically, wrong. They had optimised their Google Ads properly, for instance, and set up some good landing pages.
The problem was the value proposition. This company wasn’t really offering anything which potential investor clients really wanted. After all, these people tend to be naturally wary of “too-good-to-be-true” claims and don’t want emails from companies which are just going to waste their time.
They want something truly attractive and different if they’re going to fill out a contact form – something worth their time and attention, which is worth looking into further and which they are unlikely to find elsewhere easily.
#3 Automation
When a lead makes an enquiry or fills out a contact form via your website, what happens to it?
Does it get automatically put into a strategic pipeline where it will be effectively nurtured, or does it somehow get lost in the maze of various inboxes, databases and software?
One great way to handle new leads is to set up an automated, “lead nurturing” infrastructure. Here, email is particularly powerful. For instance, suppose a lead downloads one of your guides from your website. They aren’t ready to buy from you just now, but they do want to find out more.
From here, you can funnel them into an automated “email drip” campaign, using dedicated email marketing software such as MailChimp. In the days and weeks following their download, you could send them automated emails based their activity (or inactivity) – offering them other helpful resources which help establish you as a trusted brand, and source of value.
Eventually, after going through this process they might just be ready to buy from you.
#4 Keep forms simple
It can be tempting to want to include lots of fields on your contact form, to try and capture as much data about your prospects as possible from the outset.
It’s usually a good idea to capture the essential information such as name and email address, and possibly a message box (optional) for the lead to specify what they are looking for. Once you starting going beyond that, potentially even asking for sensitive information such as the size of their pension pot, you are going to start seeing your conversion rates dropping off.
Your contact form is an initial point of contact, where you can then go on to qualify them during your sales process. It might be that some of these leads are not for you, yet some of them are. That might be an irritation, but it is simply part of the process.
#5 Social proof
Within financial services marketing, trust is currency. If you can convince your website visitors that you are credible, competent and a safe pair of hands for their wealth, then they are more likely to convert.
One powerful way to build that trust is to clearly demonstrate your past success stories, where you have delivered value for your existing clients – especially those who are similar to your visitor.
If you can get testimonials or reviews from clients themselves, then these build up a significant profile of social proof and make you much more trustworthy in the eyes of your audience. After all, anyone can claim they are great at what they do, but if someone else says so we tend to believe it a bit more!