12 Steps for an Excellent Marketing Strategy for Your Financial Services Firm (Part 1)

 

An effective marketing strategy is essential for any successful business. As the saying goes, you have to spend money to make money.

 

As a financial advisor, you have to determine if

 

1. You’re using your marketing budget effectively
2. Your marketing aligns with your target audience’s preferences

 

Your firm’s marketing strategy should evolve with your target client’s preferences and ensure prospective clients can easily access your firm’s message.

 

To help you get your marketing strategy on track and communicate your message to the most appropriate audience, follow these 6 steps:

 

Step 1: Determine the Goals & Objectives of your Marketing Strategy

 

Define your goals and objective and what you want to achieve with your marketing strategy.

 

Step 2: Identify your Clients

 

 

Do your research and identify who are your target clients, where you can find them online, and what message would resonate with them. To determine the most effective message for your target client, it may help to develop a client avatar for each of your client segments.

 

Step 3: Research Competing Firms

 

Figure out how your competitors are marketing online, and determine their positioning strategy. If you don’t have a marketing strategy in place for your financial advisory firm, then reviewing what your competitors are doing and reworking and improving those strategies to fit your firm is a great first step for marketing online.

 

Step 4: Assign Roles to your Team

 

If you don’t have an in-house marketing team, you will need to assign roles to your team to ensure proper execution of your marketing strategy. Effective marketing is a true team effort!

 

Step 5: Build a Solid Foundation Online with a Great Website

 

 

Create and maintain a solid website for your firm that incorporates the following elements:

 

• Easy navigation
• Professional design that reflects the culture of your firm
• Search engine friendly
• Mobile friendly
• Build appropriate levels for your website that highlight each of the services that you offer clients

 

A properly built, effective website is your firm’s hub for all online marketing and lead generation!

 

Now that you have figured out your target clients, your firm’s message for them, and have a website that targets them, you are ready to shift your efforts to implementing your marketing strategy. The overall goal here is to generate qualified traffic to your website.

 

Step 6: Set up Your Firm for Long Term Success Online with Search Engine Optimization

 

 

The first step for effective SEO is identify relevant keywords for your firm that your site has a realistic chance of ranking well in Google’s search results. After this critical step, search engine optimization (SEO) can be divided into two categories:

 

• On Page SEO - Optimizing your website for your target keywords. To learn more, read this article on how to effectively optimize your financial advisory services website for SEO.

 

• Off Page SEO - This consists of building quality and relevant backlinks to your firm’s site. This effort takes proper strategy and ongoing commitment. To learn more, read this article about how to do effective off page SEO for your financial services website.

 

It’s important to remember this advice when rolling out your firm’s SEO strategy:

 

• SEO is a long term strategy. Yes, there are low hanging fruit that can yield you quick results; however, make sure your expectations are realistic with starting with SEO. For a new financial advisor’s website, it can take months or even years for your site to rank well in Google and other search engines. This timeline can vary depending on your target market, commitment to SEO, and your competitors.

 

• SEO is an ongoing process. SEO requires an ongoing commitment to ensure you build upon your foundation and stay abreast of Google search trends.

 

 

• SEO is the best way to generate qualified traffic to your site long term. Sure, paid advertising on Google and other networks can generate quick traffic and wins, but as soon as you turn off your ads, your results will disappear. After you progress towards building your firm’s SEO foundation, you will reap benefits from it forever!

 

We hope this helps as you develop or revisit your firm’s marketing strategy. Be sure check out Part 2 of this article here for steps 7-12.