When it comes down to it, marketing is all about generating leads for your financial planning business. Booking appointments and growing your client base can take a lot of legwork and 1:1 connection, but there are a few things you can do to ease the workload and generate appointments faster.
5 financial planner marketing hacks to try today
1. Make your marketing content more visual
It’s 2022 and visual content converts. Video content — for instance, financial planning how-to guides on YouTube — has been a focal point of this conversation for a few years now, and video performs extremely well if you have the resources to produce it.
However, you can go in a more visually-oriented direction without so much as a stock image database. Consider the “infographic,” a format that is perfect for spicing up written content and making it more compelling.
When text is paired with illustrations, people do 323% better at following directions than they would without the illustrations. Appeal to the shorter window of attention you’ll have with online visitors and make a clear, compelling message with a simple infographic such as this one from advisorRETIRE, a firm out of Florida:
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2. Connect at non-peak hours
Executives and thriving business owners at the peaks of their careers are busy folks. Unlike the regular employees that work their 9-5 diligently and return home, the more affluent echelons of the business hierarchy are often working early and late. Follow-up on leads with emails and phone calls (to the office) that occur in the hour before or after the traditional 9-5 window are much more likely to be received and not get lost in the shuffle of the day.
Professor James Oldroyd of the Kellogg School of Management studied over a million phone calls and found that calls between 8AM and 9AM have a 164% better chance of being answered than in the afternoon.
3. Implement countdown timers to create urgency
Have you got a one-time webinar coming up? Is tax season around the corner? Perhaps you’ve got a financial education course that’s about to commence. Whatever you can count down to with an on-screen timer will create a greater sense of urgency on your website or in your emails. A visible reminder about sensitive timeframes or deadlines is a powerful motivator, and it can be completely free to implement. MotionMail is one such free option, but there are many more.
4. Call out the benefits, not the work required
Your call-to-action (CTA) buttons and closing statements in marketing messages can make or break your conversion rates. When you are too wordy, technical, or process-oriented, you’re creating static for the reader. Avoid “construct your annual cash flow statement” and opt for something more in line with “get the free, step-by-step guide to cash flow.”
On the same note, technical language and jargon are best to avoid wherever possible. Potential clients aren’t excited about “identifying gaps in insurance planning,” “conducting a self-audit,” or “improving expense ratios.” They’ll be much more receptive to clear, benefit-focused phrasing like “protect your finances,” “build the retirement you deserve,” and “empower yourself to achieve financial goals.”
5. Don’t reinvent the wheel
Digital marketing can easily become overwhelming, the more you dive into the possibilities and everything there is to build out. Resist the urge to feel like you need to handcraft all of your marketing content, resources, downloadable assets, and financial education materials on your own.
A turnkey financial education marketing platform like FMT can provide you with a rapid ROI and help you book more appointments without reinventing the wheel. We’ll handle the heavy lifting — our program empowers you to provide high-quality, FINRA-reviewed financial education courses that have a proven track record of generating follow-up meetings. FMT will take care of the marketing, promotion, class content and registrations for your courses, and you can focus on growing your business.
Get in touch today for more information!
This article was originally published in January, 2022. Updated January, 2023.
