If you’re a financial advisor looking to get started on your next marketing campaign, you’re probably wondering how best to connect with your target audience. The traditional method would be an outbound marketing strategy in which messaging is pushed ‘out’ to consumers to get them interested in your services. But wouldn’t it be so much easier if your audience came to you instead?
That’s where an inbound marketing strategy comes in.
Studies on the effectiveness of inbound marketing have found that well-executed strategies produce roughly 54% more leads than traditional outbound marketing practices while costing an average of 61% less. Talk about getting more bang for your buck!
So before you hit the ‘launch’ button on your next outbound marketing campaign, you might want to consider an inbound marketing strategy for your financial advisory business instead. Or perhaps even combining elements of the two to get the best of both worlds and grow your business significantly.
‘I believe most marketers today spend 90% of their efforts on outbound marketing and 10% on inbound marketing, and I advocate that those ratios flip.’
Brian Halligan — Exec Chairperson and Co-Founder of HubSpot
What is inbound marketing?
The term ‘inbound marketing’ was first coined by HubSpot’s co-founder and CEO, Brian Halligan. Inbound marketing is dedicated to attracting leads by creating valuable content and experiences that are uniquely tailored to a target audience’s needs and interests. Compared to outbound marketing, which typically relies on ‘interrupting’ an audience with content that they don’t necessarily want or need, inbound marketing instead aims to answer questions and solve problems in order to build trust with prospective clients.
A successful inbound marketing campaign aligns all marketing channels around a single shared message and goal. You start by offering something relevant and valuable to the audience, whether that be a blog filled with helpful advice, a free eBook, or even a webinar. From there, you’ll need to nurture the leads attracted by your offer, gently moving them through the sales cycle until they’re ready to become paying clients.
It’s also important to continuously track, measure, and analyse your results so you can identify any opportunities for improvement as you go.
How Can Inbound Marketing Help Financial Advisors?
Trust is a key element in every successful relationship, and it’s particularly vital for financial advisors who need to convince prospects that their financial future is in safe hands.
An inbound marketing strategy allows financial advisors to begin building trust with their audience the moment they encounter your brand, whether that be through a visit to your blog, viewing your content on social media, or attending an event or webinar that you’re hosting.
Inbound marketing helps improve the quality of your leads because prospects are actively seeking out and engaging with your content. Being able to tailor your content to a specific audience also gives you the unique ability to attract more qualified leads without wasting your time — or budget — on less qualified ones. Leads can also be nurtured with trigger-based workflows and automation to deliver personalisation at scale, leading to better conversion rates.
Channels that require leads to subscribe to a brand’s content — such as emails— are a particularly effective component of inbound marketing. Asking leads to opt-in means they must indicate an active interest in your brand, effectively self-qualifying before you get in contact. This also increases the chance of leads welcoming your content compared to outbound marketing strategies which can feel a lot more intrusive.
Does Inbound Marketing Really Work?
Is content marketing really all it’s cracked up to be? The Content Preferences Survey found that supplying quality content is a highly effective strategy for attracting leads, nurturing prospects, and converting them into paying clients:
- 40% of consumers view between 3-5 pieces of content before contacting a salesperson
- 49% of B2B buyers say that content is an important factor in researching brands and making purchasing decisions
- 71% of B2B buyers explore blog content before making a purchase
- 64% of consumers prefer podcasts at the top of the sales funnel
- 48% of consumers say webinars are valuable in the middle stage of the purchasing journey
Customer Retention — The Ultimate Inbound Marketing Strategy
Remember, the journey doesn’t end the moment you make a sale. Rather than simply pushing prospects through the sales funnel, it’s important to continue connecting with past clients and nurturing their relationship with your brand.
After all, retaining an existing client is roughly 6 to 7 times less expensive than acquiring a new one. Retained clients also tend to spend more money (and more often) and are also more likely to refer you to their friends and family. In fact, just a 5% increase in customer retention can increase a company’s revenue from anywhere between 25-95%.
This is where inbound marketing really shines, helping you stay in touch with past clients so you can forge a long-term relationship that’s beneficial to everyone.
How to Run an Inbound Marketing Campaign: A Checklist for Financial Advisory Firms
Research has found that well-executed inbound marketing strategies are roughly 10 times more effective than outbound marketing strategies — while costing less to acquire and convert leads.
Let’s dive in and explore how you can execute a successful digital marketing strategy for a financial advisory business that brings your target audience to you.
- Identify your audience: Offering relevant information and personalised communication is key to a successful inbound marketing campaign. Be sure to establish a clear buyer persona before launching a campaign so you can target your content appropriately.
- Set your goals and benchmarks: Establishing SMART goals gives marketing teams clear and measurable objectives to guide their marketing efforts. SMART goals also ensure you’ll have tangible results to share with the world — and your boss — while granting valuable insights that can improve future campaigns.
- Create an irresistible offer and compelling landing pages: Don’t leave leads guessing. Your landing pages should have a clear value proposition and call to action so prospects know what they stand to gain from your offer, and what they need to do to get it.
- Optimise your content: Optimising content for search engines can help ensure that people find you online organically, minimising the need for paid advertising or more disruptive digital marketing strategies.
- Build automation into your strategy: By using automation to build trust, deliver value, and keep your brand top-of-mind, you can help guide prospects through the sales cycle, and even inspire loyal, long-term client relationships.
- Write a blog post: Spread the word about your campaign while offering relevant and helpful information to your target audience. A search engine-optimised blog post can help people find your offer organically while building brand authority.
- Share it on social media: About 54% of customers use social media to research the products they buy, so it’s a great place to share your blog posts and offers. This can help drive traffic to the top of your sales funnel.
- Add long-tail keywords: Optimise your campaign with long-tail keywords to help relevant prospects find your content online. Long-tail keywords are more specific than short-tail ones. This means they tend to get less traffic, but they also see a higher conversion rate because they allow you to attract a specific audience who are more likely to be interested in what you have to offer.
- Consider paid search and other channels: To maximise your reach, try supplementing your inbound marketing campaign with paid search and other outbound marketing methods. Just be sure to measure the effectiveness of these strategies to ensure you’re not wasting your time and budget on channels that don’t deliver.
- Track your URL: Tracking activity on your site can help identify where traffic is coming from and how visitors are finding you. This is important for determining where you should be focusing your marketing efforts.
- Measure your results: If you don’t measure your results, how can you ever expect to improve them? Analysing your data after a campaign can help you identify new opportunities, as well as areas where you could improve your strategy. It also gives you something to show off to clients, stakeholders — and your boss — at the end of the campaign.
- Celebrate the wins: You went to all the effort of setting those SMART goals, so take a moment to celebrate when you achieve them. Celebrating the wins is great for morale and can help inspire your team to strive for even greater results in the future.
Discover the Secrets to Inbound Marketing Success
Want to learn more about launching a successful inbound marketing campaign that sends qualified leads flooding your door? Register today for the Inbound Marketing Workshop for Financial Advisory Firms — It’s FREE.
