4 Tools to Transform Your Advisor Lead Generation

 

The buying process has changed. In the old world, Marketing found a list of customers through lists, email blasts, and mass advertising and passed the list on to Sales. Today, buyers can do their own research online and can find a variety of resources through search, social media, and other online channels. Customers can learn a great deal before even speaking to a salesperson. Organizations need to make sure they establish and build that digital relationship. What tools might a financial advisor use for lead generation and lead nurturing?

Inbound Marketing Platforms

There exists a variety of 3rd party marketing platforms that can be used to help your lead generation efforts. Two of those platforms are Hubspot and Marketo. These platforms are designed to create a workflow and buyers journey around your leads. These platforms must be integrated with existing systems, such as a website, email, social media, etc. Then any leads generated can be imported and nurtured through both marketing and sales initiatives. These platforms allow you to monitor the entire process from start to finish and identify weak spots in your customer experience.

Your Own Enterprise Platform

It may be possible that an enterprise has their own platform to manage their lead generation efforts. The concern with this is the cost, the staff, the maintenance, and the training that the enterprise will need to provide to the advisors. A potential issue with an owned platform outside of the cost is integration and implementation. The platform is not likely going to integrate well with email and websites. Due to its lack of integration, it will demand of advisors to manually input the lead data into the system. The concern with manual input is the question of will it be utilized or will the extra steps lead to low adoption. Furthermore, when advisors manually input lead information, this opens the door for human error.

Doing It Themselves

A poorly adopted platform or a lack of any lead generation platform will require the financial advisors to do the lead management and generation on their own. This could be done in an email platform such as Gmail or Outlook, or even in a Spreadsheet document. Lead generation increases the potential of human error, both in the entry of the contact information but as well as contacting clients with wrong information or forgetting to contact them at all. Furthermore, while this is being managed by the advisors, the enterprise is being left in the dark as to what is happening and if advisors are generating and converting leads.

Another component of advisors handling their marketing autonomously is creating their own website. Each advisor will turn to different tools from Wix or GoDaddy, to hiring a developer to create the site. Regardless of the method, each site will not resemble brand standards, will not be integrated with a lead management system, and cannot be overseen at the enterprise level

Digital Agent – The Compliant Advisor Marketing Platform

The Digital Agent platform brings in some of the best features and excludes the pitfalls but creating a fully integrated marketing platform. It empowers financial advisors to create personal localized campaigns while remaining compliant with regulations and brand standards. When advisors are actively creating marketing content, it allows enterprise marketers to expand their reach and the field can grow leads at a fraction of the cost. The Digital Agent platform is implemented and monitored at the enterprise level. This allows for mass utilization, reducing human error, while still give the control for the enterprise.

Lead generation and nurturing has evolved, and it is crucial to give your financial advisors the proper tools to bring in and manage leads through the customer journey. A platform that allows for complete integration meets those objectives of lead generation while also reducing the possibility for error or blind spots caused by financial advisors having to juggle too many tools.