4 Reasons Why Advisors Need Their Own Online Presence
Do the financial advisors of your organization have their own website? When a prospect or client comes to your organization’s website and wants to find an advisor, is it an easy painless process to search for an advisor and then view their website? If you answered no to these questions, it might be worth thinking about how this is holding back the success of your advisors and ultimately your enterprise brand. These four reasons go through why advisors need their own online presence and how stopping them from having one is hurting their business.
1. Traditional Marketing Just Doesn’t Cut It Anymore
Years ago before we had as many digital marketing channels as we do now, financial advisors would use the traditional methods of marketing such as networking, advertising in magazines, newspapers or on bus shelters and on the radio. In today’s digital world those methods are alone are not going to allow advisors to be competitive among the thousands of other advisors out there competing for new business. It’s very easy to have a website today so when a business owner doesn’t have one it can hurt them.
2. A Strong Way to Build Trust and Credibility
Having an online presence through social media, a website, email, etc. or proven ways that help advisors show empathy and expertise. An empathetic financial advisor is one who truly listens to clients, ensuring they feel understood and who demonstrate that they care. By having an online presence on social media and a website, prospects and clients gain insight into your expertise, which helps build credibility.
3. Limiting in Their Ability to Reach More People
By building that trust and credibility online, financial advisors can reach more people and build a bigger audience. They can more easily develop relationships with existing clients and create new ones with prospects. Only by using traditional methods, the number of people you can reach is far less. Also, leveraging online methods, advisors can track and monitor their efforts so they know exactly which tasks are worth spending time.
4. It Gives Them the Ability to Deliver a Personalized Experience
It’s no secret that people like receiving communication from people rather than brands. When you think of your inbox, do you pay more attention to the emails that come from people or the emails that come from brands? It’s likely that you pay closer attention and read the emails from people, and even more from people that you trust and like. By having a website, advisors can deliver a personalized experience to the community they serve. If there is a specific audience that the advisor is targeting, creating content that will resonate with that audience will be beneficial and helpful. Additionally, through email marketing, advisors can segment lists and sent different content to different lists. For example, the new parents are probably more interested about RESPs and leveraging RRSPs than say an older couple who is thinking about retiring soon and making sure their kids are taken care of. The ability to personalize online has drastically improved the ability to generate leads and ultimately new business.
In conclusion, if the advisors of your organization do not have their own website, think about why. Is it because as an organization you want to maintain a certain level of control? If yes, there are tools and platforms available today that make that possible, while still allowing advisors to have an online presence. Ultimately, as enterprise marketers we want to support advisors so they can grow their business. By having an online presence such as a website, financial advisors are able to turn prospects into clients.
