What's hot and what not in financial services business conversions

Sometimes it is hard to believe people are using the same old methods to try and generate quality leads. It may be true that “it always has worked”, and it may be a mistake to “change a running system”, but there are multiple options to make better use of your time and money to land new clients. This applies especially to financial services, where trust, success and reputation build the backbone of a successful financial advisor. Dealing with someone’s life savings and generating profitable portfolios is time consuming enough, so connecting with new quality leads should not be. Follow these tips to rethink and dial in your marketing strategies.

Cold Calling

As with everything in a picture perfect world: If it is working for you and not costing you an arm and a leg why not utilizing this source of business development. Reality oftentimes tells a slightly different story. High cost per call or commissions are just balancing out the income they create, or worse. Cold calling is depending on multiple factors: a sound sales background, outstanding communication skills and a bullet proof sales pitch. Even then it is time consuming, the success rates are minimal and bounce rates are high.

Branding

With an ever growing army of competitors offering the exact same services, it has become crucial to clearly differentiate to stick out from the crowd. Define a clear, compelling and outstanding business purpose. A clear vision will help your team and your clients to follow your reasons for success.

Referrals

Although as old as business itself, it remains one of the strongest business development tools there is. It is eliminating the majority of your biz dev, as new prospects approach you with a baseline of trust in your work. You generally start talking more about details than trying to convince them that you are the one. Best quality leads there are, so why not allocating some money up this alley? Become creative.

Creating content

We have all heard about them, we all read them - you are doing it right now - Blogs! To build trust and community blogging has become a popular marketing tool for customer acquisition. The idea is to create appealing and informative content to help your future customers identify with you and your work. It increases your digital footprint and -done right- will eventually become an interesting source for quality leads. If you are not a writer, nor have the technical skills to share it with the world wide web, outsource. In today's fast paced world it is helpful to spice up your content by breaking it down into small digestible pieces wrapping it in a visually appealing packaging.

Social Media

Creating relevant content is one thing, spreading the word about what you are doing and reaching the right audience to tell them who you are, what you do and why they should do business with you is another. Just like your clients portfolios, finding a balanced use to the wide array of options is key.

Big data, analytics and automation

Financial business with a solid digital presence should look into ways to scale and optimize. Luckily we live in an age of information overflow on how people are using the internet and measuring their experience and behavior when browsing online. The secret to success is filtering out all relevant data to convert someone who is just looking for information to a new prospect. The more you know about your clients motivation the better.

Get featured

Every publicity is publicity. Share your story with as many people as possible, promote overdue changes, criticize outdated regulations and be active within your niche. Reach out to influencers in these areas for a feature story written about you.

Community outreach

Spread the word of who you are and what you are good at in your community. Sponsor events or your daughters baseball team, attend charities, host network meetings, talk business during your next leisure activity. It is less about actively selling, but more become the person at the top of people's minds when thinking about the services you offer.

Quality over quantity

Although traditional market tools like print ads, billboards or mailing letters may work for other businesses, the cost per conversion is rather high. It is very hard placing the amount of information necessary to land a new customer on a one pager and at the same time make it look visually appealing. Focus on adding value instead of noise and to pick the medium to get the word out.

We hope you enjoyed the article. Let me know if we missed something and as always reach out for expert advice.

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