Today, almost everyone is online trying to learn, research, buy, or just be entertained. Yet many financial professionals are still in the process of building their digital presence. Now’s a great time to begin building yours. Why? Useful, relevant online content that’s promoted effectively attracts visitors—some of which can be converted into clients. Plus, a strong digital presence can improve the online experience of your current clients, which can lead to better retention. This workbook will guide your efforts in five areas of building your digital presence:

• Website A professional and user-friendly website can help establish credibility and educate prospects on the services you offer.
• Content High-quality content can help position you as a thought leader, making you more magnetic for new business opportunities.
• Social networks Social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter can be used to share industry news, your professional insights, and promotional content.
• Email marketing Regular newsletters can be used to educate and inform clients on market trends, investment strategies, and updates on you and your team.
• Paid marketing Paid advertising on platforms like Google Ads, LinkedIn, and Facebook can help drive traffic to your website and increase brand awareness.

By implementing these strategies and leveraging the power of digital marketing, you can increase your visibility, attract new clients and ultimately grow your business.

Website

Your website is the foundation of your digital presence, so it’s important to make sure it accurately reflects your brand image and appeals to your target audience. Consider the following best practices:

• Homepage First Impression: Your homepage should reflect your brand image. Make sure it’s visually appealing and focused on your target audience or niche. Include local or niche images and a clear call-to-action.

  Assess your homepage’s clarity. Compare your site with some leading brands, such as Apple, Honda, Adobe, Visa, and Chick-fil-A. What do these sites have in common? Their design is simple, and their message is clear. Yours should be too.

• Team Profile: Highlight your team by showcasing professional and personal bios, photos, and links to social-media accounts

• Services Overview: Present an easily accessible overview of your wealth-management process, including client experience and communication commitments. Consider adding a video description of your services.

• Client Profile: Detail your niche, client requirements, and exceptions to your niche

• Branding: Ensure your website has a clear, high-resolution logo, consistent font, color, and imagery matching your company’s brand

• Mobile and Cross-Browser Compatibility: Ensure your website is optimized for mobile devices and works across different browsers with quick page-loading times and accessible design

• Navigation: Keep navigation simple and easily accessible with clear and meaningful titles

• Call-to-Action: Place a prominent call-to-action with a lead-capture mechanism, such as an e-book or white paper. Measure conversion rates with analytics, e.g., how many visitors enter their email to get your e-book.

• Contact Information: Provide easily accessible business information, including address, phone numbers, email addresses, social-media links, and office hours. Consider adding an area map and premises images to make finding your office easy.

• Automatic Calendaring: Incorporate an automatic calendaring system for booking appointments or consultations directly from your website, making it easier for clients to schedule time with you and freeing up your time from manual scheduling tasks

Content

The Content you create demonstrates thought leadership, making you more magnetic for attracting prospects. There are three content types to consider, but begin with one:

Social Networks

Social media offers an inexpensive and scalable way to reach ideal clients, prospects, and COIs. From the comfort of your office, you can showcase your professionalism, smarts, and client focus to your community. While there are a wide variety of social platforms from which to choose, we think Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are optimal choices: Here’s why:

Facebook:

• It’s the world’s largest and most active social network
• Brand yourself as a financial professional who deeply cares about your clients
• Build client relationships by staying informed about their lives

LinkedIn:

• Search for potential clients and find pathways to introductions 
• Showcase thought leadership and expertise
• Build and engage a network of current and potential clients

Twitter:

• Stay up-to-date on the latest industry trends and developments
• Use this fast-paced platform to engage with key contacts in real-time
• Position yourself as current and tech-savvy

Ideally, content for these networks is a blend of personal and business. Even on a business network such as LinkedIn, you’ll notice that more-personal posts tend to outperform business-focused posts. Consider using the following post types below as you plan your monthly content. 

Email Marketing

With social networks, you can be at the mercy of algorithms regarding who sees your posts. When emailing your practice newsletter, you have greater control because you own your email list. As your email list grows, your impact grows.

The most effective newsletters aren’t the boilerplate, all-financial type. Instead, create a more personal newsletter that people will enjoy reading. If you want to start a newsletter or perhaps revamp an existing one, here are a few things to keep in mind: 

Practice Newsletter Tips

• Double down on hand-crafted content

  Your articles, podcasts, and videos are the stars of your newsletter. Ideal clients aren’t interested in templated financial newsletters. If they know you and like you, they’ll take time to read content that you had a hand in creating. 

• Highlight the people closest to your brand

  The easiest way to personalize is to include photos and mentions of the people closest to your brand. Are you and your team appearing on video or in photos? Is there a team member you could highlight? Could you showcase a center of influence (COI) to show how they can also help clients? Every little bit of personalization helps.

• Send it once a month

  It’s better to send one newsletter each month that’s filled with great content than two newsletters per month that are mediocre. The quality of each newsletter determines whether the next newsletter gets opened. 

• Your design matters

  The layout, fonts, and graphics create a perception. The perception you want is current, professional, and in no way “behind the times.” Be sure to test your newsletter on desktop and mobile before launch.  

• Your email subject line is very important

  Most people get dozens, if not hundreds, of emails a day and make snap decisions on which they’ll open. Test different subject lines to improve your open rates. You could test two subject lines on two small subsets of your audience. Then, the subject line receiving the highest open rate gets distributed to the rest of your email list. 

• Focus on gaining subscribers

  You probably already have an email list. Let’s crank it up a notch. Encourage your clients, prospects, and COIs to sign up. Have a prominent newsletter signup on your website. Promote your newsletter on your social channels. One subscriber at a time, it adds up.

Paid Marketing

The reality is that social networks only spread your posts so far for free. Paid marketing is necessary to scale your digital presence. Fortunately, paid marketing is a cost-effective way to reach a targeted potential audience.

With LinkedIn and Facebook, you’re essentially paying for an ad to be shown to users based on these sites’ targeting capabilities. With paid seach, e.g. Google, you can purchase investment or planning-related search terms that can help lead people to your website. The number of users you reach depends on your objectives and your budget. 

Possible ad strategies 

• Raise awareness of your practice and capabilities
• Promote an upcoming webinar or recorded course
• Encourage people to follow your Facebook page
• Showcase your video or podcast 
• Offer free consultations through a request form
• Give an article teaser that drives traffic to your website 

Targeting 

• Do you have an ideal client profile? You can likely get your social posts in front of your target profile with paid social. It’s possible to target an audience using: 
• Demographics
• Location
• Occupation
• Interests

With the right combination of messaging, creative approach, and targeting, paid marketing can help you in measurable ways. Whether it’s in raising awareness in your community, driving more traffic to your website, or building your email list, the results are worth pursuing.