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Inbound marketing automation for financial advisors

imagine if you woke up on Monday morning and open your calendar to see two or three ideal prospects that want to meet with you and who called in to set an appointment. they know everything about you and your business and what you do and what you offer. they have already decided to get rid of their current financial advisor and have spent time researching and reading your offers. And you know nothing about them. what if I told you that they had one to $5 million to invest and wanted comprehensive planning and comprehensive advice. would this be an ideal Monday morning for you? how can you make that happen.

Steps to automate your marketing as a financial advisor- Build your content marketing strategy first

Decide what type of content to share and how you want to become a thought leader in which category. For example, I want to be a thought leader in practice management so all content shared relates to practice management. Build a bank of content to share first. Then decide how often you want to share? daily weekly monthly? Start simple monthly or weekly, ten as you build out content post more regularly. Consider using a posting programming tool such as hootsuite or buffer. Have a list of 3 to 6 months worth of content. 

Newsletters or blog, the next step is calls to action content

What is the difference between a newsletter and a blog? I ask advisors this all the time and while there seems to be differences, a blog is more well received then signing up for our newsletter. Build your blog focusing on what your ideal prospects will get. start with what they are not currently getting. let me ask you 5 questions. Do they have all four five or six of their goals mapped out on paper? offer clarity through goals based planning. do they have their complete financial life in order in all seven areas? this includes taxes state investment risk insurance debt and cash flow. do the understand what they have paid and revieved and not recieved from their current advisor. what have they paid over the last 10 years in dollars. offer a fee audit. do they have a comprehensive plan? does their comprehensive plan give them the probability of success of reaching all their goals? does their comprehensive plan stress test scenarios for their future? do they have a network of professionals that is coordinated by their financial advisor? here are five blogs to write with five different and unique offers.

Build out your article library, whether you hire a ghostwriter, or write yourself, the keys to content is the calls to action on the bottom of your blog, article, or newsletter. What are you offering besides content? 

- A free 15 minute quick chat / consultation ? put your online calendar link in

- A sample comprehensive financial plan? 

 -A guide checklist ebook ? put a landing page link to it 

-A guide to the top mistakes people make when hiring a financial advisor

- Webinars / seminars / events 

-Link to website and connect with you on social media 

-Fee audit checklist https://feeaudit.getresponsepages.com/

Build out 1-5 calls to action content and or links to get people from social media onto your email list. Imagine if social media networks shut down, you do not have a database or connections? This is where automation marketing software comes in. 

Have a list of 2-5 calls to action to offer

Next is promotion

Start sharing your content on social media with calls to action, to measure your results. This is where you will find how often you should post, where to post and when, and what hashtags to use ( hint 5 hashtags for each post including your region) 

Posting may include:

social media

sending as a newsletter or blog email 

Groups on LinkedIn 

Share with industry forums and communities 

Pay per click - online advertising - eg Google adwords facebook and LinkedIn as well as Instagram

Remenber always check with compliance and your branch manager before proceeding with any marketing activity.

How do I track success?

Track your metrics weekly and monthly to gauge your performance. the key measurement to track is the number of signups you get and connections but you get through social media but more importantly the e-mail and permission to e-mail market to them on a regular basis.

Inbound marketing automation

Finally take this whole process and put it into a marketing automation system to program your marketing to do all the heavy lifting for you. For example I'm a prospect and I connect with you on LinkedIn then you offer a fee audit guide and get my e-mail address. once I sign up for the feet audit guide it also adds me to your weekly blog. The program does the double opt in. now that I have signed up we sequence out all offers over a period of time so that I eventually receive all of your best material all of your offers. you have taken me from I've got an advisor I'm good 2 I did not know that I'm getting all of this from my current advisor. I now know what I don't know. how do you feel when you've paid for something and not gotten it. what do you do about it. you make a change and that's where the opportunity comes by automating your marketing. I would check with your firm or research software such as  such as  MailChimp Hubspot Getresponse and other automated marketing softwares are critical to financial advisors who want to grow their business. This article is a sample of how inbound marketing works, but like any marketing there is several variations. Find someone who understands inbound marketing and marketing automation or e-mail me at grant@ghicks.com

How about your goals for your practice in 2022? Our Practice management checklist or fee audit checklist 

While each financial advisor's practice may have a different approach, advisors need to understand where their practice needs help, and will they get the right help for the right part of their practice. What areas does your practice need help with? Get a copy of our updated 21-page “Comprehensive Practice Management Strategies checklist” by going to our website

 https://www.advisorpracticemanagement.com/about-us or clicking here 

https://practicemanagement.getresponsepages.com/

Contact us to help get clarity around your goals on paper, and having the goals conversation by contacting grant at grant@ghicks.com or click on the link to set up a no-obligation 20-minute discussion https://my.timetrade.com/book/JMTNJ regardless if we work together, let’s have a chat and listen to your biggest practice management concerns to help you get clarity around your future business.

Grant Hicks, CIM, is President of Advisor Practice Management and co-author of “Guerrilla Marketing For Financial Advisors” 1st and 2nd edition. www.advisorpracticemanagement.com for speaking, workshops or coaching, contact Grant at grant@ghicks.com Grants combined financial advisor clients manage over 5 billion AUM, and earn over $50 million dollars combined!