We’ve been talking a lot about the advantages of inbound marketing over outbound marketing. Once you are convinced about the effectiveness of implementing a proven methodology of using inbound marketing for asset managers, the question becomes: How does my firm get started?
Once these tactics are implemented as part of an overall inbound marketing strategy, you will quickly discover how much easier the conversations will become with potential advisors and investors. The inbound sales and marketing methodology is designed to educate your target audience until they become ready to have a conversation with your sales team. When done correctly, the closing process is shorter and more efficient!
To begin building a modern marketing system that generates consistent, quality leads, you should consider the following 5 steps...
Advisor Personas are detailed representations of your ideal clients. They are a concept of what your perfect client might look like based on the actual traits of your best customers. They help to refine your target audience, marketing content, and messaging.
An asset management firm may have more than one type of “ideal” prospect, but each persona should be comprehensive, including information like the RIA’s demographics, preferences, pain points, and goals.
Once you’ve answered questions—such as what are my target RIAs trying to achieve, what pain points am I trying to solve for them, and what pain points are these advisors trying to solve for their clients—you can begin to develop content that has intrinsic value for this highly prized audience.
Search engine optimization (SEO) strategies make it easier for financial advisors to find your site, blog, and other content. Everything from site design to keyword use can play a role in improving your website’s SEO rankings. Content that gets indexed has an edge in searches and in gaining advisors’ attention when they are searching online.
Blogging has long been one of the most effective ways to deliver long-form content with your own valuable thought leadership and written in your unique voice. A rich, compelling, and insightful blog should be the backbone of inbound marketing in the RIA channel.
Your blog should also be rich in keywords. One of your first steps is to also set up an editorial calendar so that you have a schedule, a list of topics to blog about, and keywords to incorporate.
Harness social publishing tools to reach your ideal financial advisors where they hang out online. There’s no better social media platform for B2B connections than LinkedIn.
Your asset management firm should have a company page, and key management should have professional profiles—share your posts from both. Twitter is great for following figures in the media (reporters, editors, thought leaders) commenting on posts, and retweeting articles. Remember that social media is a conversation and that, like original posts, commenting and sharing is highly valued.
Whether launching or expanding your website, the quality of your pages matter if your want advisors to engage. Make sure that your web pages are logically organized, visually compelling, and well written. Just like blogs, web pages should have keywords woven in to help your content get recognized by search engines. Pages that are indexed by search engines turn up higher in searches making it easier for advisors to find your information. And don’t forget to tag photos and graphics. Images, as well as copy, are considered content.
You now have the core components of starting your inbound marketing campaign in the RIA channel. Remember, advisors are savvier than ever and they’re beginning their online relationships with their own self-directed research. Outdated, outbound marketing strategies — like cold calling and email blasts — simply aren’t efficient or cost-effective anymore.
But with a clear-eyed focus on your advisor buyer personas, and tools like smart SEO, blogs, social media posts, and web pages, your asset management firm can begin to generate valuable leads—leads that are much more likely to invest in your products.