How can you harness the power of Google to attract Wealth Advisor clients?
Wealth management is an intensely competitive industry. It's hard for a small firm or independent wealth management advisor to carve out a place for itself on the web, when the big banking and insurance groups have the marketing budgets to eat up the lion's share of the pie.
And yet...
The Internet offers many opportunities for Wealth Advisors to promote themselves and attract targeted customers.
The trick is knowing how to do it.
Understanding the marketing funnel
First, we need to understand the difference between traditional marketing and digital marketing in the context of the marketing funnel. The marketing funnel is one of the most useful tools a company can use to track its sales process from start to finish. It's the marketing representation of the sales tunnel, the customer journey from point of discovery to point of action.
At the top of the funnel, the widest part, many people interact with you or your firm in some way, even if they only notice an ad or a LinkedIn post. The narrower the funnel, the fewer people are present at each stage. The final tip of the funnel represents a customer making a purchase or taking an action. It is at this point that the number of people present is at its lowest.
The different marketing strategies at each stage of the funnel.
Why is Google the key to attracting Wealth Advisor clients online?
Where do you go when you have a question? The Internet, and probably Google.
Unsurprisingly, this is also the case when someone has a financial need, often following a life change. Some people will pick up the phone to call their banker, but the majority will go to Google to gather information and find a solution to their needs. It's also important to remember that money matters, or more precisely wealth matters, are rarely urgent and require a great deal of thought.
Your future customers will be using the Internet to find information or answers to their problems. The main tool for facilitating these searches is the Google search engine. So it's by understanding how Google works that a wealth management firm can leverage this super-powerful tool to attract customers through its website.
We're going to show you the potential of search engines (Google) to bring you visibility, and how a Wealth Advisor Advisor can exploit it to generate traffic, leads and customers for his or her practice.
The power of Google Ads for Wealth Advisors
Formerly known as AdWords, Google Ads is the largest online advertising network owned by Google. It's one of the best-known ways of doing paid search, and a must if you want to develop or establish your visibility on the Web quickly. It's perfectly possible to manage your Google Ads campaigns on your own, but as with any marketing action, it requires time, expertise and budget.
In the field of wealth management and financial products, there's a lot of competition, not only from the stakes, but also from the major banking and insurance groups, who position themselves on the same keywords and therefore drive up the cost of high keywords. Knowing that it takes time to achieve good results, especially at local level, the Google Ads Ads acquisition strategy is a service I'd call on a service provider for.
Rise Digital offers a service for creating and managing Google Ads campaigns. Our added value is based on several years' work in understanding targeting parameters and applying them to the very specific needs of financial and wealth management players, in particular with Google Local Services ads.
Google Local Services Ads
Google offers "Local Services" ads that will enable you to reach customers in your geographical area.
These sponsored ads are often displayed at the top of search results, and are part of Google's initiative to make it easier for users to connect with local businesses that meet their needs. For example, if you're looking for a wealth management firm, you'll notice that the first ads encourage users to call the business. To run these ads, you need to have a Google Ads account, verify the business and submit certain documents.
My take: The advantage of Local Services ads is that you only pay for actual results - in this case, phone calls or form submissions from potential customers. These ads are a very effective way of getting in touch with potential customers who are actively looking for your services.
The power of SEO for greater visibility
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the cornerstone of online visibility. Studies show that 75% of users never look beyond the first page of search results (position 10). How do you get on the first page of Google?
Before answering, it's important to bear in mind that SEO requires continuous work and long-term investment. Google's bot crawls thousands of sites a day, using an algorithm that takes into account over 200 criteria to rank pages in the search engine results according to the relevance of the content and the reputation of the site following a keyword query. As the algorithm is constantly evolving, SEO needs to be worked on regularly and by a professional.
My opinion: SEO is an incredibly powerful tool, because it's a guarantee of trust. Organic results have a higher conversion rate than paid results. As in Lafontaine's fable, if Google Ads are the ivy, SEO is the tortoise. It's an in-depth process that requires technique, time and patience. The downside of SEO is the algorithm. Google changes its algorithm regularly, which disrupts the work done in SEO. But this can also present opportunities for "small players" to steal traffic from the industry giants.
Google My Business for local reach
If you had to remember just one thing from this article, it would be the importance of Google My Business (GMB) for your practice's visibility in search engine results. It's a no-brainer, because it's essentially free visibility. I advise you to regularly update your Google My Business by publishing articles, collecting reviews and ensuring that all your information and links are up to date. For Wealth Advisors , where the local clientele is often the most important, Google My Business is an indispensable tool for reaching them. Recent surveys indicate that 46% of Google searches have a local intent.
My opinion: Google My Business profiles occupy an important place in search results and can have a significant impact on your online presence. Asking your customers for reviews, where appropriate, is also a smart strategy for gaining visibility and trust with potential customers.
Google Analytics and the power of data
There's no point in having a website without Google Analytics, the tool developed by Google to efficiently track user behavior and measure data on your site. Data is the power of digital.
It's a well-known fact that learning is the key to becoming an expert.
Let's use a case study. You're a Wealth Advisor in Clermond-Ferrand and you want to develop your customer base. By applying a data-driven approach, you will:
Hypothesize "SME managers in Auvergne don't anticipate retirement".
Formulate a strategy to meet this need, "create written content to address this issue".
Set up an action, "write a blog post and use social networks to distribute it".
Measure the results of these actions "site visits, click-through rates".
Adjust strategy according to results obtained, "switch to another distribution channel".
Data is the key to informed marketing decisions. Take the diagram listing the so-called "traditional" marketing activities: none can measure the effectiveness of actions with as much granularity as Digital Marketing for Wealth Advisor. The power of digital is here!
My opinion: All your marketing actions must have one main objective, which is to bring traffic to your site. It's thanks to your site that you're going to help users move along the sales tunnel. There are a multitude of strategies for attracting traffic to your site, but it's through data that we can understand whether traffic is qualitative and qualified.
The potential of Google to transform a Wealth Advisor's marketing efforts is undeniable. With tools like Google Ads, SEO, Google My Business and Google Analytics, you have the keys to identifying your ideal customers and presenting them with content aligned to their needs. That's the power of digital marketing. Your approach needs to be holistic and multi-channel. Optimize your site for search enginesSEO, activate paid Google Ads Ads to drive traffic quickly to your site, and maintain a regular presence on Google My Business to appear at the top of the Google results page.
In the digital age, an effective online presence is essential for Wealth Advisors and Wealth Management companies. Google search, with its different ad formats and local business profiles, offers a wealth of opportunities to attract new customers. By taking steps to optimize your online presence, you can improve your chances of reaching new customers who are actively seeking your services.
If you'd like to find out more, I invite you to book a free discovery call or download our free guide, the Wealth Advisor Digital.
