When looking into incorporating new efforts and strategies into ones business, we often look for examples of how others have had success. We use these examples to justify the value and benefit for taking on this new strategy especially when the new strategy may seem like an unknown. This is certainly true with financial advisors and content marketing. The objective for a financial advisor is to work with clients to assess their financial needs and help them with their related concerns.
As marketers, we applaud those financial advisors who provide great customer experience; however, this does not generate new opportunities for the advisor (other than the occasional word of mouth reference). This is why it is important that advisors not only need the online presence of a website, but they need to be active. While results always vary and the marketing efforts required must be tuned on a case by case basis, being an active blogger can be as simple as blogging once a week. Let’s explore some of the real-life results of an active advisor to prove the value and benefit of this kind of marketing strategy.
The chart included below is pulled from an advisor’s website in which they actively blog by publishing new content at least once a week and who makes frequent updates to their website to improve its performance. These metrics are comparing the six months of September 2017 – February 2018 vs. March 2018 – August 2018.
These four stats allow us to examine to overall improvement of the customer journey on the website. From finding the advisor, to their experience on the website, and the conversion into new business.
Finding the Advisor
The benefit that an advisor gets from becoming an active blogger will have a great impact on SEO(Search Engine Optimization). As the advisor is posting more content, Google will see that the site is active and rewards its it with better rankings. Then, because the advisor is posting valuable blog content, the audience is more engaged and it staying on the site longer; Google’s algorithms notice this increase in performance and thus quality, and rewards the site with even better rankings. This advisor saw a 50% increase in website traffic and that 30% of inbound traffic is driven by organic search. What these metrics indicate is that the blog content is allowing the site to reach further (50% more) at a lower cost because that larger number of prospects are coming to the site through free search.
Experience on the Website
As mentioned previously, this advisor is now publishing higher quality blog content. This content either showing of the advisor’s personal brand voice, is targeted at a precise audience, and it providing valuable information that then shows the advisor to be knowledgeable and trustworthy. This great blog content is resulting in a 20% increase in time on site. On top of the valuable information this advisor is providing that makes clients and prospects want to keep reading, there is often prompts to other articles or other pages. Since the client or prospect is feeling they are getting valuable information, they continue reading and clicking, thus spending more time on this advisor’s website.
Conversion Into New Business
The final stat highlights that 40% of the form submissions in those six months were lead based. This is the ROI that advisors often look for in regards to their website. Well, in the case of this advisor, since they are providing such valuable information to clients or prospects and building a level of trust(which is especially important in the case of people’s finances), that they feel confident to want to take the next step with that advisor.
While it may seem like content marketing could be a big undertaking for a financial advisor who is not a trained marketer, we can see with that a little effort in becoming an active blogger can have a tremendous impact through the entire customer journey. From making the advisor more findable, to giving more valuable content to keep them on the site, to giving them the confidence to take the next step and convert. Other things that this advisor has done is to use professional photos of themselves and their team throughout the website to provide a human touch, as well as leveraging clear call-to-action buttons across the website to increase conversions. We hope that financial advisors now see the benefit of adopting a similar strategy and how a bit of effort into the website can be the extra push to start bringing in more opportunities to grow the business.
